A Mars Odyssey

A previous Chief of Program Support for the Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition at NASA, receiving NASA’s APOLLO Achievement Award, and also serving on the Industry Advistory Council to NASA, on April 9, 2007, Mr. Robert Briskman has received a prestigious award for his outstanding accomplishments in the field of aerospace communication, and his recognized pioneer accomplishments in the satellite and communications field with the 2007 AIAA Aerospace Communications Award.

The award was given for Robert Briskman’s pioneering efforts of developing the Satellite digital Radio Service (DARS), a co-founded effort in 1991 which he still maintains the position of Technical Executive. Over 50 technical papers, numerous patents, and a position in the Space Foundation and Society of Satellite Professionals International Halls of Fame is credited to him, with over 32 years of implementation experience of satellite telecommunication systems at COMSTAT AND NASA. Without satellites, communications, and orbits, planned trips to the Moon and Mars would virtually be impossible. The award given to Robert Briskman is one of extreme knowledge that has made this a realization, which is demonstrated in his work record and his engineering background.

The word satellite is not a simple term, and means several things other than radios, cable tv, and cell phones for use on Earth. The satellites from outer space are defined as any object built by man, and placed into orbit by man such as the one that Robert Briskman has received his award for. They are also called artificial satellites, quite opposite the natural satellites that are not man-made, such as the Moon or a dwarf planet. The similarity is that they orbit something. Satellites operate in different types of orbit around Earth, with the most common satellites being geostationary and polar, with some in inclined orbits. There are other types of orbits—an example is the Molniya orbits of the Soviet spacecraft.

The term geostationary orbit refers to the satellite position where it is always in the same position to the rotating Earth. Appearing stationary, it is synchronous to the rotation of the Earth, while orbiting at the same rate, in the same directions as Earth. Used to cover the weather, monitoring severe local storms, and tropical cyclones—it provides distorted images of the polar regions. Also, the spatial resolution is poor due to the fact it needs to provide such a large picture of things.

The polar orbit refers to a more global view of Earth, where the satellites cover the areas of the Earth where it is most difficult to cover on site, such as Antartica. Operating in a sun-synchronous orbit, the equator and each latitude are passed by the satellite at the same local solar time daily all year long. A more consistent picture can be seen of data and long-term comparisons when used with this orbit method. The Terra/Aqua satellites are the orbiting satellites which use this method.

The inclining orbit, used by Russia, lies between the polar and geostationary orbit methods. Orbits of this method may be determined by the usage of a low inclination satellite, such as the study of the tropics, or the latitude of a launch site. It is used to determine a region on Earth that is the most interesting.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 7:06 am and is filed under Mission Objectives, Space Agency News, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.