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State Television Says Iran Launches New Satellite Into Space
An anonymous reader writes State television in Iran is reporting the Islamic Republic has launched a new satellite into space, its fourth in recent years to orbit the Earth. The report Monday quoted Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan saying the satellite, designed and built in Iran, is named "Fajr," or dawn in Farsi. The report did not elaborate.
Nope. Sputnik produced a signal, a repetitive beep, that could be picked up by amateur radio operators. Not only could US citizens verify Sputnik for themselves, but cold war paranoia ascribed various sinister purposes to the beep. It was to signal sleeper agents or mind control people or something. In reality, it was just a beep. The soviets had a proper satellite (Sputnik 3) that they wanted to send up but it wasn't ready in time
In fact, the US Navy's Transit satellite navigation system was conceived when JHU engineers used a computer to determine the exact orbit of the satellite from the doppler shift of the beep received on the ground and realized that if the orbit of the satellite were known a priori, the computation was equivalent to locating yourself (ie a ship) on the surface of the Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...