Space, the expanse of the universe and even what lies beyond is something that I have always really enjoyed thinking about, researching, and discussing. Growing up in a small town and in one of the nations few protected Dark Sky Preserves , I have spent hundreds of hours curled in a sleeping bag staring at the stars and watching / counting the satellites fly by. It was always a game who could see the most satellites or shooting starts as we lay there for hours on end and sometimes until the sky begin to lighten again. Below is a picture taken from a hill in town, Ketchum, Idaho.
These seemingly magical, orbiting space objects were purposely put into space as a way to study the earth, environment, weather, global positioning (aka GPS), and even military. While all of these are important, it was not until recently that I started looking into and paying attention to the GPS aspect. With anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 satellites orbiting and about 30 GPS specific satellites, that is a lot of data getting collected and send back to Earth. Since the first GPS satellite was launched into orbit, the technology and accuracy has continued to improve, and will continue with the next GPSIII by Lockheed Martin that now orbits Earth. GPS receivers on Earth (in your car, your phone, and even your watch) intercepts these signals, traveling at the speed of light back to Earth and calculates how far away they are to give your/the devices exact location.
The future of location tracking is a can of worms people are excited but cautious in exploring. As humans we are continually trying to find the newest, best, fastest way to do something, which is no different with position tracking. Many ethical concerns are brought up by this because as it becomes the norm for people to cary their phones with them at all points, individual tracking occurs.
On a completely different but concerning note, space junk has become an increasing problem as it is filing up our orbit. No pun intended, there is only so much space in space, and as increased demand for GPS accuracy, thus increased GPS satellites, there will be no space left. I few paragraphs ago mentioned how many satellites are in space and it was a pretty big range. This range is due to the fact that when a satellite is no longer useful, ie no longer active, it has no where to go other than continue to orbit. So, even though there could be up to 5,000 satellites orbiting Earth, roughly only one third of them are actually active, the rest, now are just trash stuck in orbit.
In the sad truth - just as our physical Earth has become polluted, over crowded, and in the need of serious change, space also needs help. There are many articles out there focusing on this and I ask you, with the little free time you have, try to read a few, see if you have the million dollar idea of how to start the much needed help.
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