• Question: How do you know if the satelites are working and are not broken?

    Asked by ball4 to Ed, Hayley, Jason, Nathan, Sophie on 18 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Hayley Evers-King

      Hayley Evers-King answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      We get communications from the satellites on an almost constant basis. This can tell us about the state of the various systems on board. We can also test them against other things – like data collected by us on boats, and by making them take pictures of constant things, like the moon.

      Sometimes they do stop working though. Last year we lost contact with my favourite satellite – ENVISAT. It just went totally quiet. Other satellites have taken a picture of it, so it’s still there but we are no longer receiving data from it 🙁

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