The use of satellites is growing more and more popular and diverse every day. If you kept your eye on the news, you would have seen that New Zealand is capable of launching satellites into the far beyond - Rocket Lab is launching successfully from Māhia Peninsula.

Common uses for satellites

It is good to know the most common uses for satellites and which of these are used by Smartrak to provide you with the Smartrak System.

Most common uses for satellites

• Astronomy satellites study stellar phenomena like black holes, quasars and distant galaxies.
• Weather satellite technology monitors the Earth's temperature and cloud formations that help us predict weather patterns and forecasts.
• Navigation satellites give receivers on earth their coordinate positions. Most people refer to this as GPS (Global Navigation System), but GPS is only one of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) orbiting our planet. GPS is an American Government owned network of 32 satellites run by the US Airforce. The table shows a selection of other GNSS networks and some information about them:

Communications satellites

Communications satellites are used for communications by allowing radio, television and telephone transmissions to be sent live anywhere on Earth. Apart from broadcasting your Sky TV signal or enabling you to make a satellite phone call, this type of satellite also enables us to transmit and receive data, much as you do on the internet or your office network. The most common data communications satellite networks are:

Smartrak mostly uses GPS and GLONASS satellite systems

The majority of Smartrak's asset and personal tracking units make use of the GPS and GLONASS global navigation satellite systems to determine their location. This information is transmitted via the cellular network to the Smartrak system or, where the AVL is accompanied by a satellite modem, the data can be transmitted through the Iridium communications satellite network to the system.

Certain personal tracking units are also satellite communication capable. They use either the Iridium or Globalstar satellite communications networks to transmit their location (and other information) back to the Smartrak for you to view/analyse when using either the Smartrak System Map or Reporting modules.