Space Technology, Innovation
for Human Progress
One of the most amazing natural creations in
planetary world is space, a region beyond the earth’s atmosphere or even beyond
the solar system. Some of the contents of the space, billions of kilometers
away from the earth are seen with naked eyes while millions of others are seen
with the aid of telescopes and yet several others in billions are never seen.
The wonders of nature, the Omnipotent perfect creation of the universe. Mysteries
surrounding the space and its contents motivated the development of space
science that give birth to space technology. Today, Space technology is referred
to an aerospace industry for use in spaceflight, satellites, or space
exploration. Thus, space technology includes spacecraft, satellites, space
stations, and support infrastructure, equipment, and procedures. Space is a
novel environment, which requires special tools and techniques for use to get
the desire results. The use of these tools and procedures in space permits us
to enjoy diversity of services for our advancement. These services include daily
or periodic weather forecasting, remote sensing, GPS systems, satellite
television, and some long-distance communications systems. These services
critically rely on space infrastructure. Space technology has greatly
influenced advancement of other sciences such as astronomy and Earth science through
remote sensing technique. New technologies originating with or accelerated by
space-related endeavors are often subsequently exploited in other economic
activities. What are the advancements in space technology and their benefits to
mankind?
Among all the four important segments of
the space technology, satellite is most diverse with services affecting all
parts of human endeavors. One may be aware of the use of satellite in
television connectivity with different stations transmitting TV signals and
telephone calls, and for satellite navigation systems used in some cars and
airplanes. This is just a tip of the iceberg, there are varieties of services
render by satellites. Satellites have studied oceans, the atmosphere, clouds,
weather, rain forests, deserts, cities, farmlands, ice sheets, and just about
everything else on and even in Earth. Using information from satellites, we
study and understand how pollution from cars, factories, and even household
products affects the atmosphere. Example, it was through satellite that certain
kinds of air pollution are found to be destroying the ozone layer in the
atmosphere, which is responsible for the protection of living things from
harmful ultraviolet rays from sun. This means that we must find and use alternative
chemicals that are less damaging to the atmosphere and can protect the ozone
layer. This brings the issue of greenhouse emission, global warming and the
strategy to reduce the ozone layer from disappearing. Another very important
use of satellite is in the area of weather prediction. Over the years, some
dangerous weather conditions were precisely predicted; GOAES East (satellite) viewed
Hurricane Isabel forming in the mid-Atlantic. Thus, the two GOES satellites,
stationed high over the east and west coasts of the United States track
hurricanes and other storms as they develop and send information to the earth
for mitigation measures. This enable us to view from space the warning of
dangerous weather condition to prepare us and even evacuate vulnerable areas
where a hurricane might pass through. The use of satellites to predict the weather
will not change its condition, but the knowledge ahead of time provide us time
and chance to make adequate preparation to mitigate its likely negative effects.
In a similar vein, there are other two important
satellites, TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 that continuously study the happenings
in the oceans across the earth. They are being used to study and provide us
with information on the complex movements of oceanic water and enable long-term
weather predictions. Oceanic natural and man-made activities are the major
direct cause of weather variations. This is because the oceans receive energy
through sunlight and store a lot of heat, which has great effect on the weather
dissimilarities. The two satellites (TOPEX and Jason-1) periodically observe an
event known as “El Niño”, in which unusually warm water collects in the Pacific
Ocean near South America causes very heavy rain in some parts of the world and
drought in others with precise predictions of times and places where such
events are to happen. Without these satellites, these predictions couldn’t have
been possible. Again, there are certain remote parts on Earth that cannot be
monitored without using space (satellite) technology. Similarly, Recent and
past satellite images of a rainforest enable us to study how fast forests and
other precious habitats are disappearing.
Views from space of the North and South
Poles allow us to monitor the shrinking of ice sheets, which are important
indicators of global warming and possible flooding of coastal regions. In fact,
some satellites have instruments that can measure the height and thickness of
clouds and how much water they contain or can reveal important information such
as the height of the oceans all over Earth, or the wind speed inside clouds or
even distinguish between different types of trees in the forest and show where
trees might be diseased or not. Yes, there are several and unaccountable usages
of satellite, which is one of the major components of space technology.
Today, the roles of satellite technology in
communication industry have made it advance exponentially and imperatively. Global
crave for Communication services has made satellite industry to experience
consistent positive growth in recent years. According to the Satellite Industry
Association, the satellite technology sector as a whole showed a positive
growth of late. Three years ago, global
revenues rose by 2 percent to reach $260.5 billion in 2016. Out of this
revenue, USA alone accounted for 44 percent of market share in global satellite
sector revenues ($110.3 billion).
Expansion was fueled largely by ground
equipment and launch services, which respectively rose to 7 percent and 2
percent in 2016, respectively. Satellite services also grew by 0.2 percent. By
end of this year (2019), the growth is expected to increase as Satellites is
heading toward the consumer marketplace; the services are more widely available
and accessible to billions of people especially in developing nations. Another reason for the increase of revenue of
satellite services is the integration of “Built-in digital payload verification”.
Modern satellites often carry digital payloads with the components necessary to
send and receive information at ranges that were unthinkable ten years ago,
regardless of environmental impedance like canopy forests or mountains. Boeing
upped the ante on payload technology in 2017 when it developed testing systems
built directly into the bodies of satellites. This advancement eliminates the
need for prelaunch testing and thus, save considerable time and money. The
vessels containing this feature, 03b mPOWER satellites, were launched in
September 2017.
Advances in satellite technology are linearly
increasing especially in the broadcast industry. The industry is increasingly
faced with high demand for greater bandwidth as a result of higher image resolution
(UltraHD), superior color accuracy (HDR) and immersive sound. The “Internet of
Things (IoT) is progressively swelling the number of connectivity per household.
Statista (www.statista.com),
a ‘Global Business data platform’ estimated 15 billion IoT-connected devices in
2015; 23 billion this year; and over 75 billion by 2025. On the average,
Intel’s estimation indicates that “there will be 50 connected devices per home
by 2020” globally.
As the prediction of future demands of Satellite
services are being made, the satellite operators are already gearing up for a
future awash with bits. One of such operators is Newtec, a privately giant
satellite operator, which recently (on 3rd of October 2019) integrated
with another giant operator ST Engineering iDirect to create the most advance
satellite ground capabilities. Last year, Newtec launched their highly
publicized satellite; MDM5010 satellite modem, which made Arabsat signing up immediately.
This satellite modem has a variety of Newtec’s DVB-S2X wideband with new high
throughput satellite services including enterprise and VNO services, IP
trunking and mobile backhaul for 3G and 4G services. The modem is capable of
handling more than 500 Mbps of traffic that can permit setting up almost any
type and size of network. Where is the place of Africa in all these cutthroat
competition? To be completed next week with spacecraft and space station
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