Some Planets Have More "Satellites" Than You Think

I was researching over the internet earlier just browsing through planets and their moons, when I came across Saturn and Jupiters moons. Usually, I thought, when I thought about how many moons a planet had it was 1, maybe 2 moons. Until I read how many Saturn and Jupiter have. Saturn has 60 moons! And Jupiter has 63! I thought that this was amazing, we are so used to seeing our planet, earth, with just one moon. Then to think that those planets out there have 60 and more, it blew my mind. Obviously, these moons are spread out over a vast distance around the planet, but none the less they are still their moons. The distances can range from 100 thousand km from the planet, all the way to 28 million km from the planet.

Satellites Mean More Than Just Technology

Before I started taking Astronomy class, I had always believed that satellites were objects launched into the atmosphere by humans that gathered information and took plenty of pictures. However, in astronomy I learned that a satellite is another name for moons. A moon is an object that orbits a planet. The name satellite came to be because a satellite is used to refer to any object orbiting another object. My two favorite moons are the two that orbit Mars, Deimos and Phobos. Two very small moons, but I like what their names translate to. Phobos is Greek for fear and Deimos is Greek for dread. An interesting fact about Phobos is that it is one of the least reflective bodies of the solar system. Deimos is the picture on top and Phobos is the moon on the bottom.

Galileo "The Space Exploration Telescope"

On october 18, 1989 Galileo was launched into space. It was created by NASA and utilized for space exploration. It was sent to Jupiter to study it's atmosphere, moons and surrounding magnetosphere. Galileo was the first satellite ever to encounter an asteroid, and to photograph an asteroids moon. The ultimate goal for Galileo is once it reaches Jupiter, to penetrate it's cloudy layer and take pictures. However, it will never reach the core of Jupiter because it is 60,000 km to the core from the cloud tops. In order for Galileo to even reach Jupiter, it needed to use the gravitational pull from other planets to sling shot it further and deeper into space. I think that satellites are a very incredible invention, to be able to throw these things up into space and gather information for us. Think about all that we have learned from them, and imagine how much more advanced they can only get with time..