Sentence examples for operational satellites from inspiring English sources
Most of the thousand or so operational satellites in orbit are multi-million-dollar machines that provide major industries with scientific research, global positioning or military espionage.
The constellation of operational satellites that allows GPS devices to work is being expanded over the next year or two to 27 from 24.
GOES-14 joined GOES-13 to serve as a backup satellite until one of the operational satellites (GOES-11 and GOES-12) experiences trouble.
Full deployment (27 operational satellites and three spares) is likely to take most of the decade.
The consortium's win follows its initial contract victory in 2010 for 14 operational satellites.
The company is aiming for 18 fully operational satellites around the planet.
Brian Weeden, an expert on space debris at the Secure World Foundation, a think-tank, says Stratcom now screens every operational satellite, every day, looking for close approaches, and notifies all operators.
In a statement, the company said that it had "lost an operational satellite" on Tuesday, apparently after it collided with "a nonoperational" Russian satellite.
Researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow said the debris had a "special political danger" because it is difficult to determine whether an operational satellite had been hit by the fragments or was intentionally attacked by another country.
Researchers said fragments of spent rockets and other hurtling hardware posed a "special political danger" because of the difficulty in confirming that an operational satellite had been struck by flying debris and had not fallen victim to an intentional attack by another nation.
Speaking at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on a day when the weather forecast warned of possible tornadoes and golf-ball-size hail east of the city, Dr. Lubchenco said there would be a gap of at least a year and a half, and possibly much longer, during which NOAA has no operational satellite circling the planet on a north-south orbit.
