altitudes of up to two thousand kilometers in the lower part of this region are satellites that monitor the earth the international space station also orbits and. medium earth orbit or amnio accommodate satellites at distances of two thousand to thirty five thousand kilometers from mars and this region of space is frequented by navigation satellites. the. exploitable at just under thirty six thousand kilometers is for satellites in geostationary orbit seven lights here follow the direction of the earth s rotation they re typically used for telecommunications including global television broadcasts each geostationary satellite is assigned to a box around a hundred kilometers wide the distance to the next box is around five hundred kilometers. geostationary satellites have
how close is it to work, and what does it mean? it s awe close pass, thomas. this is the closest pass of any tracked asteroid we ve ever seen. it s only going to be about 17,200 miles away from earth, and that places it just 5,000 miles away from the outer band of geostationary satellites. this is really, really close. when we talk about the size of it and the scope of it, i mean, how accurate are we in the tracking? the good thing is that nasa and other agencies have been diligent about tracking this asteroid for some time now, so they have very good data on what the orbital pass of this is, and they can tell within a very few hundred feet or so, maybe a few hundred miles, how close this is to earth, and they know for sure that it won t come any closer than 17,150. that s pretty good. it s great they do that because they can look at other potentials like this too. we can be that accurate about its size and its pass of the earth, but let s get to this