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We’re all familiar with geostationary satellite antennas - the Foxtel dishes atop many rooftops that point to a fixed location in space. The AITC has a number of programs, however, that rely on our ability to interact with satellites that freely zip across the sky under the influence of a plethora of perturbing forces. Understanding these forces is the first step to being able to predict where any of the 20,000+ catalogued orbital objects are at any particular instant so we know where - and when - to point our telescopes at them. In this talk I’ll outline how satellites move, how we find them and the challenges and opportunities they afford to our communications and space environment research programs. |
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