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navigation satellite

(Encyclopedia)navigation satellite, artificial satellite designed expressly to aid the navigation of sea and air traffic. Early navigation satellites, from the Transit series launched in 1960 to the U.S. navy's Nav...

weather satellite

(Encyclopedia)weather satellite, artificial satellite used to gather data on a global basis for improvement of weather forecasting. Information includes cloud cover, storm location, temperature, and heat balance in...

reconnaissance satellite

(Encyclopedia)reconnaissance satellite, artificial satellite launched by a country to provide intelligence information on the military activities of foreign countries. There are four major types. Early-warning sate...

satellite, natural

(Encyclopedia)satellite, natural, celestial body orbiting a planet, dwarf planet, asteroid, or star of a larger size. The most familiar natural satellite is the earth's moon; thus, satellites of other planets are o...

code, in communications

(Encyclopedia)code, in communications, set of symbols and rules for their manipulation by which the symbols can be made to carry information. By this extended definition all written and spoken languages are codes. ...

modulation, in communications

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Modulation modulation, in communications, process in which some characteristic of a wave (the carrier wave) is made to vary in accordance with an information-bearing signal wave (the modulatin...

Syncom

(Encyclopedia)Syncom: see communications satellite. ...

Telstar

(Encyclopedia)Telstar: see communications satellite. ...

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