23 Geeky Facts About Satellites That Are Pretty Exciting

Himawari 8 is a geostationary Japanese satellite that takes pictures of the Earth above Australia and Japan every 10 minutes.

Vanguard 1, launched in 1958, was the fourth orbital satellite, but first to be solar powered and although communication with it was lost in 1964, it remains the oldest manmade satellite still in orbit and has already completed more than 220,000 Earth orbits.

GeoEye-1, the satellite that provides Google with imagery for Google Maps, provides the US government with the same imagery but at a higher resolution.