You're listening to Sleep Tight Science. Did you know that some satellites orbiting Earth are traveling at incredibly high speeds?

Much faster than the speed of sound?

What?

The International Space Station orbits at a speed of approximately 17,500 miles per hour,

or 28,000 kilometers per hour. Wow! That's super fast.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Sleep Tight Science, a bedtime show that answers your questions

about science.

Did you know that there are giant metal balls up in the sky that help us watch TV and talk to our friends on the other side of the world?

They are called satellites, and they're like super interesting cosmic cell phone towers.

When you are outside, particularly at night, you might see lights moving across

the sky. These moving lights that we see are usually either airplanes or satellites. Sometimes

when we use our imagination, we might think they are aliens from outer space.

Unlike flying saucers, airplanes have blinking lights that help other pilots see them and avoid collisions.

So you'll often see a steady light and a blinking light moving across the sky together.

Satellites on the other hand reflect sunlight, which makes them appear like moving stars in the night sky.

You may also see shooting stars or meteors, bits of space debris that burn up in the Earth's

atmosphere and create a streak of light in the sky.

In this episode, we will learn about artificial or man-made satellites

and try to answer some of the questions you, our listeners,

have submitted about this topic and others.

So let's learn about some of those moving lights that we see up in the sky.

Thank you. What is a satellite and what does it do? What is a satellite?

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