Space technology


Space technology is technology developed by space science or the aerospace industry for use in spaceflight, satellites, or space exploration. Space technology includes spacecraft, satellites, space stations, and support infrastructure, equipment, and procedures and space warfare. Space is such a novel environment that attempting to work in it requires new tools and techniques. Many common everyday services such as weather forecasting, remote sensing, GPS systems, satellite television, and some long-distance communications systems critically rely on space infrastructure. Of the sciences, astronomy and Earth science benefit from space technology. New technologies originating with or accelerated by space-related endeavors are often subsequently exploited in other economic activities.
The earth on which we live is a more-or-less spherical planet which orbits a medium-sized star, the Sun. The Earth is one of the eight planets which orbit the sun. These planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In his 1970 science fiction novel Ringworld, Larry Niven imagined a civilization that created a rotating wheel space within the habitable zone around its star that rotated sufficiently rapidly to maintain artificial gravity. Future space technology may well encompass similar concepts to allow human civilization to expand further into the solar system and beyond.

History of space technology

The first country on Earth to put any technology into space was Russia, formally known as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. A satellite, Sputnik1, was launched on October 4, 1957, and put into an elliptical low Earth Orbit. The U.S.S.R. had several objectives for the satellite to accomplish to declare a mission success.
1.      Test the method of placing an artificial satellite into Earth orbit
2.      Provide information on the density of the atmosphere by calculating its lifetime in orbit
3.      Test radio and optical methods of orbital tracking
4.      Determine the effects of radio wave propagation though the atmosphere
5.      Check principles of pressurization used on the satellites