Satellites and Orbits

What this quiz asks

• What supplies the electricity for most satellites like this one while they orbit the Earth?
• What does the Russian word 'sputnik' mean?
• Select ALL of these that Sputnik 1 carried.
• Which science-fiction writer described a network of geostationary communication satellites in a 1945 magazine article?
• A geostationary satellite has to orbit directly above the equator.
• Does a satellite need to keep its engines firing to stay in orbit?
• What was the first satellite launched by the United States, in January 1958?
• What made TIROS-1, launched by the United States in April 1960, a first?
• China's BeiDou satellite navigation system takes its name from which star pattern?
• Roughly how many minutes did Sputnik 1 take to circle the Earth once?
• What is special about a Sun-synchronous orbit, used by many Earth-observation satellites?
• Select ALL of these that are series of weather satellites.
• When it was launched in 1990, why was Hubble placed in a low orbit only about 600 km up?
• Satellites in low Earth orbit slowly lose height because of drag from the thin upper atmosphere.
• According to Kepler's second law, when does a planet move fastest along its orbit?
• Syncom 3, the first geostationary satellite, relayed live TV pictures of which event in 1964?
• Which disaster led US President Ronald Reagan to promise that GPS would be free for civilian use once it was ready?
• What name is given to the feared chain reaction in which debris collisions create more debris, causing more collisions?
• In February 2009 an American Iridium satellite was destroyed in the first accidental collision between two intact satellites. What did it hit?
• Order these satellites by launch date, earliest first.