Navigation in space

Communication is vitally important to astronauts while they are in space. Not only does it allow them to talk to their friends and family back home, it also allows them to communicate with the team of experts on the ground that helps them carry out their mission safely .

The main features of space communications systems that distinguish them from earth communications systems are the continuous, often very rapid change in the position of the spacecraft, the necessity of knowing the current coordinates of the spacecraft and of aiming the receiving and transmitting antennas of the earth …

Messages travel through space as radio waves , just like the radio waves that you receive with a car radio. Each spacecraft has a transmitter and a receiver for radio waves as well as a way of interpreting the information received and acting on it.

For example, the space station communicates through Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) , which transmit data to ground stations in New Mexico and Guam. The recently launched Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will send data through orbiters around Mars, which forward the data to Earth.6 Eki 2020

Astronauts have devices in their helmets which transfer the sound waves from their voices into radio waves and transmit them to the ground (or other astronauts in space). This is how a radio at home works ��� radio waves are often thought to be a form of sound but they are not sound waves.

If the communication takes place between any two earth stations through a satellite, then it is called as satellite communication . In this communication, electromagnetic waves are used as carrier signals.