How Does a Satellite Work?
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What is a Satellite?
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A satellite is nothing more then a mirror, reflecting signals sent from Earth by a dish, and bouncing them back down to another dish at another location.
How Does It Bounce the Signal?
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You can see how this works for an example by getting a hand-held mirror and shining a flashlight into it, if you angle it right, the light will be shining onto the wall. This is the same way a satellite bounces signal.
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How Does It Stay in Orbit?
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Some satellites are equipped with positioning rockets and fuel to keep it in orbit.
The most common method is by gravity; due to the elliptical orbit, it will stay on a path and never fall to the Earth.
How Does the Satellite Work for TV?
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A satellite again is a mirror; it is simply bouncing the audio and video signal, usually in C or KU band. The small dish companies receive this feed by way of dish farms, with many dishes pointed at different satellites. these dish farms then process the main signal and compress it, usually to mpeg format.
Once compressed, it gets resent out to the provider's satellite and mirrored onto your small dish.
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