Which Weather Satellite Is Watching You? [Infographic]

22,300 miles above the equator, satellites keep an eye on Earthly weather conditions.

By Colin Lecher Posted 11.01.2012 at 3:30 pm 3 Comments

Zone Coverage NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Meteosat-9 image courtesy of NASA/Rob Simmons using EUMETSAT data ©2010 Hurricane Sandy image courtesy of NASA GOES Project Space object illustration courtesy of NASA/Orbital Debris Program Office

Weather satellites above Earth stay in perfect, geosynchronized orbit, so you can probably guess at which one is keeping an eye out for events like Sandy. New Yorkers? Probably GOES-13. Calfornians? Good ol' GOES-15.

The satellites are 22,300 miles up, which puts them higher than most satellites, but that number's key: any higher or lower and they'd move faster or slower than the Earth spins, putting them out of their carefully crafted orbit.

[NASA]

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