Commercial Space Technologies and Applications: Communication, Remote Sensing, GPS, and Meteorological Satellites, Second Edition

Mohammad Razani

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429846144
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This new edition introduces and examines the space technologies that benefit our everyday lives. Each chapter now includes exercises and problems, and the content covers new satellites and emerging technologies. It explores the ever-improving quality of satellite systems and services, and also investigates ways to bring about higher resolution satellite imagery and lower satellite costs. The focus is on man-made satellites, which are becoming smaller, smarter, cheaper, and easier to launch, having a longer life span, and are less susceptible to interference. Furthermore, the book considers advances in several key technologies that affect the satellite industry.

• Includes extensive study questions and exercises after each chapter.

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• Explains present commercial space technology and its future outlook.

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• Explores the many applications of space technologies and their impact on our lives, including real world examples.

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• Presents a future outlook on robotics, communications and navigation, and human health and nanotechnology.
• Provides a clear understanding of space, space technologies, space applications, space security, space regulations, a space roadmap, and their impact on the lives of humans now and for generations to come.

1

Overview

This book will provide a clear understanding of space, space technologies, space applications, and its impact on the lives of humans now and for the generations to come.

The many applications of space technologies and their impact on our lives will be explored with real life and tangible examples. The future outlook of robotics, communications and navigation, human health, and nanotechnology are presented.

Space technologies have progressed at a very rapid and astonishing pace and have affected our lives in day-to-day functions, whether at home, at work, or when we travel. We all have experienced the radio signal degradations in our cars when we travel and get away from the radio transmitters. With digital satellite radio broadcasting, we no longer have these worries, and we can listen to our favorite channel traveling across continents with CD quality. Millions every year are also switching to satellite TV with hundreds of channel capabilities. Remote and isolated areas in the developing as well as developed countries can now watch the same TV channels that people who live in the metropolitan areas watch. They can use telecommunication means, e-learning, telemedicine, GPS, and numerous other services that seemed impossible only a few short years ago. Through space technologies one can penetrate deep into the Earth, ocean, or dense jungles and extract information from thousands of miles away in space. Floods could be prevented by forecasting the amount of water resulting from snowmelts, months before it even happens. Soils of different moistures can be used for different crops to improve quality and productivity through the ability to estimate soil moisture contents from space even under vegetation cover. Oil spills can be best controlled by real-time image collection and onboard processing by using Earth resource satellite. Having worked under National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contracts for many years in these areas and having taught and carried out research projects in space-related technologies, the author has a good understanding of how space and its technologies can benefit societies through a systematic and wellplanned set of policy-making decisions.

In this book, space and its applications will be discussed and the role of satellites in communications, Earth resource utilization, weather forecasting, and other areas will be explained. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development on its 16th Session held May 5–16, 2008, in New York^* in its “Space for Sustainable Development Report” explained that space technology and its applications, such as Earth observation systems, meteorological satellites, satellite communications, and satellite navigation and positioning systems, strongly support the implementation of actions called for at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. It further emphasized that space applications are effective tools for monitoring and conducting assessments of the environment, managing the use of natural resources, providing early warnings of and managing natural disasters, providing education and health services in rural and remote areas, and connecting people around the world. In the concluding remarks of the report on the “Contribution of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space” to the work of the “Commission on Sustainable Development for the Thematic Cluster 2008–2009,” one reads: “Space science and technology and their applications, coupled with advances made in other fields of science and technology, offer a wide range of specific tools and solutions and can enable and support States in overcoming obstacles to sustainable development.”^†

These findings and other similar evidences on the effective role of space technology and its applications in various fields have inspired the author to address these issues in this book. The author intends to expose the young generation to these findings in order to guide them through their fields of studies and educate them to adapt themselves to the needs of our generation and generations to come in order to achieve the most efficient ways of utilizing these technologies for peaceful purposes and in improving the quality of life globally.

This second edition of the book is intended as a text book for college students in engineering and engineering technology fields. Although it introduces some concepts utilizing mathematical approaches, students with calculus knowledge should have no difficulty grasping these concepts and working on the questions and exercises at the end of the chapters.

* http://sustaianabledevelopment.un.org/intergovernmental/csd16.

† United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Commission on Sustainable Development, 16th Session, May 5-16, 2008, New York, p. 11.

2

Commercial Space Technologies

2.1 Introduction

Space has been defined in numerous ways depending on who defines it and for what purpose. One could define space as a “boundless, three dimensional extents in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction.”*

This chapter is divided into two sections, one discussing outer space and the other the space within reach. Outer space is any location outside Earth’s atmosphere, and that is how this chapter is organized. Human achievements in both frontiers are admirable and have made remarkable advances in both fronts.

Until the late 17th century, philosophers were resigned to the idea that the universe was driven by supernatural forces with little relationship between the behavior of objects on Earth and those above. This view began to change around 1609, when Johannes Kepler finally swept aside all notions of heavenly spheres and celestial clockwork, replacing them with laws of planetary motion that could accurately describe the orbits of the planets. However, it was the English scientist Isaac Newton (1642–1727) who finally showed how the movement of the planets, and of objects on Earth, could all be explained through three simple laws of motion and the effects of a force he called gravity that was produced by any object with a substantial mass. Newton’s three Laws of Motion are as follows:

• Newton’s First Law of Motion states that in order for the motion of an object to change, a force must act upon it, a concept generally called inertia.
• Newton’s Second Law of Motion defines the relationship between acceleration, force, and mass.
• Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that any time a force acts from one object to another, there is an equal force acting back on the original object. If you pull on a rope, therefore, the rope is pulling back on you as well.

Let’s step a little back in history and look into the roots of the theories that were developed in the 17th century. Many historians claim that the Tusi-Couple developed by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi who was born in Tus-khurasan, Persia, on February 17, 1201, and died in Baghdad on June 25, 1274, was used by Copernicus after he discovered it in al-Tusi’s work.¹ In his treatise,² Nasir gave a new model of lunar motion, essentially different from Ptolemy’s. In his model Nasir, for the first time in the history of astronomy, employed a theorem invented by himself which, 250 years later, occurred again in Chapter IV of Book III of Copernicus’ “De Revolutionibus” (on the revolution of the heavenly spheres). This theorem runs as follows: “If a point moves with uniform circular motion clockwise around the epicycle while the center of the epicycle moves counterclockwise with half this speed along an equal deferent circle, the point will describe a straight-line segment.”

The Philosophy of Space and how it was developed through time is a detailed and well documented one, to very briefly point out the major milestones in this centuries-long journey however, one can highlight the followings:

• In the early 11th century, Islamic philosopher and physicist, Ibual Haytham (also known as Alhacen or Alhazen), discussed space perception and its epistemological implication in his Book of Optics (1021). Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn-al Haytham was born in Barsa which was then a part of Persia. This Persian scientist and philosopher provided experimental proof of the intromission model of vision which led to changes in the way the visual perception of space was understood, contrary to the previous emission theory of vision, supported by Euclid and Ptolemy.
• In the 17th century, the philosophy of space and time became the central issue in epistemology and metaphysics. Gottfried Leibniz, the German philosopher-mathematician, and Isaac Newton, the English physicist-mathematician, discussed two opposing theories for what constitutes space. From Leibniz’s point of view, space was an idealized abstraction from the relations between individual entities or their possible locations and therefore could not be continuous but must be discrete. Newton, on the other hand, took space to be more than relations between material objects and based his position on observation and experimentation and argued that space must exist independently of matter.
• In the 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed a theory of knowledge in which knowledge about space can be both a priori and “synthetic.” According to Kant’s theory, space and time are not discovered by humans to be objective features of the world but are part of an unavoidable systematic framework for organizing our experiences. Kant rejected the view that space must be either a substance or a relation.
• In the 19th century, Carl Friedrich Gauss, another German mathematician, considered an empirical investigation of geometrical structure of space for the first time. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper on a “special theory of relativity,” in which he proposed that space and time be combined into a single construct known as “space-time.” In this theory, the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, which has the result that two events that appear simultaneous to one particular observer will not be simultaneous to another observer if the observers are moving with respect to one another. Later Einstein worked on a “general theory of relativity” that is a theory of how gravity interacts with space-time. According to this theory “time goes more slowly at places with lower gravitational potential” and “rays of light bend in the presence of a gravitational field.”

2.2 Outer Space

As mentioned earlier, outer space refers to any location outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

By the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) description, the Earth’s atmosphere is a blanket of air surrounding the Earth and reaches over 560 km (348 miles) from the surface of the Earth. The envelope of gas surrounding the Earth changes from the ground up, and four distinct layers have been identified using thermal characteristics, chemical composition, movement, and density. Figure 2.1 shows the layers of atmosphere. There is a layer called the exosphere that starts at the top of the thermosphere and continues until it merges with interplanetary gases, or space. This layer continues until about 10,000 km above the surface of the Earth. In this region of the atmosphere, hydrogen and helium are the prime components and are only present at extremely low densities. In February 2008, the Conference on Disarmament agreed that the term “outer space” means the space above the Earth in excess of 100 km above sea level.

2.2.1 Outer Space Laws

Space law refers to the law that encompasses national and international laws governing all aspects of outer space activities. Recent history of space law began with the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, by the Soviet Union in October 1957.

Space has an infinite number of resources and to set laws regarding these resources, if not impossible, would be very difficult. With the goal of setting outer space firmly in place and the nation mobilized around the common sociopolitical goal of defeating the Russians in the Cold War, an assembly of National Security and States Department officials sought to quash President John F. Kennedy’s plans and eliminate this inspirational force.⁴ The 1967 Space Treaty prohibits any country from asserting sovereignty over any celestial body, thereby eradicating global international rivalry as a key ingredient in space exploration. In 1958, shortly after the launch of Sputnik, the General Assembly of th...