Tag
Every story in the journal tagged “satellites”, newest first.
4 stories
Space Radar draws everything in orbit where it really is, for people who have never heard of an orbital element. Why I think a map of space has to be honest and kind at once, what that costs, and why it is free and open.
A map of space is a pile of other people’s measurements. Who made them, how old they are, which parts are computed, which are photographs and which are honest drawings, and how to send a correction when one of them is wrong.
About seventeen thousand working machines, and at least as many dead ones, share the space a few hundred kilometres over your head. How it filled up in one lifetime, who keeps the list, what a collision looks like, and why it reaches your weather forecast.
The time on your phone, the dot on the map, the weather icon, the bread on the table: an ordinary morning leans on a few hundred quiet machines that almost nobody thinks about. Where they are, how they work, and how easily they could be taken away.
