Thanks to the satellites we have now GPS! Let’s discover five spectacular satellites facts for kids.
The first man-made satellite was called Sputnik 1 and it was launched by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1957. It was the first artificial Earth satellite in space. Sputnik 1 was roughly the same size as a beach ball and it was made from aluminium. Sputnik 1 was powered by three silver-zinc batteries. Sputnik 1 orbited for 21 days, transmitting radio signals until the batteries died. Sputnik 1 marked the beginning of the Space Age.
The International Space Station (ISS) is a laboratory in orbit with Earth which habitats astronauts, who work in it for about 6 months at a time, exploring and studying space. People have lived in the ISS since November 2000. The ISS travels at about 17,500 miles per hour and it takes just 90 minutes for it to make one orbit of Earth. The ISS is roughly 108 metres long ,which is about the same size as an American football field. The space station has a mass of nearly 1 million pounds, which is about three times as heavy as The Statue of Liberty. It is one of the most expensive objects in the world costing roughly $150 billion.
There are two types of satellites, these are natural satellites and man-made satellites. There are about 200 natural satellites in the solar system that we know of. All the planets and moon of the solar system are natural satellites. The planets are satellites to the sun. And moons are satellites to the planets. The Moon is the Earth’s natural satellite. Artificial, man-made satellites orbit around the Earth that send back information to Earth. Man-made satellites can often be seen at night.
There are thousands of satellites orbiting Earth at the one time. These satellites can orbit the Earth from three different altitudes, Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) and High-Earth Orbit (HEO). LEO being satellites closest to Earth and HEO satellites being the furthest away. Some of the satellites gather information about the Earth while others gather information about space.
Sputnik 2 was the second satellite to be launched into the Earth’s orbit and it was the first satellite to carry a living passenger into space. Laika the dog was the first living passenger to go into space and orbit the Earth.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about satellites as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic these satellites are, you can move on to learn about our Space like: The Universe, Asteroids and Meteors.
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