Image credit: NASA’s Pioneer Venus Orbiter image of Venus’s upper-atmosphere clouds as seen in the ultraviolet, 1979 By Dr. Ethan Siegel When you think about the four rocky planets in our Solar System—Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—you probably think about them in that exact order: sorted by their distance from the Sun. It …
Category: Kids Stuff
Mar 13
Old Tool, New Use: GPS and the Terrestrial Reference Frame
Artist’s interpretation of the Jason 2 satellite. To do its job properly, satellites like Jason 2 require as accurate a terrestrial reference frame as possible. Image courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech. By Alex H. Kasprak Flying over 1300 kilometers above Earth, the Jason 2 satellite knows its distance from the ocean down to a matter of …