Does the signal go through the entire earth? Does it curve and travel around the earth? How come the earth isn’t blocking out the signal? I just can’t wrap my head around it. Same thing with satelites that transmit our internet. There can’t be thousands of satelites in a perfect formation that covers every angle, so how does it work?
PRIMARILY interested in the first scenario, how does the ISS transfer signals to USA if the earth’s mass is between USA and the satelite?
In: 5
There are radio stations connected around the world.
It transmits to Australia. From there to the US by cable.
About satellites, they are in near perfect formation, but the farther away less satellites are needed to cover the entire surface. There are only 31 GPS satellites covering the entire planet. For Internet, they need to be closer, so there are more, but their orbits are calculated so when one is out of range, there will be another one.
One last note about satellites and internet: most of the Internet traffic goes through submarine cables. Satellites are like a last option if where you are doesn’t have any infrastructure and can’t be reached by any cabled Internet. The distance the signal must travel to and from a satellite would make your connection very very slow.
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