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Importance of satellites
Television:
Satellites send television signals directly to homes, but they also are the backbone of cable and network TV. These satellites send signals from a central station that generates programming to smaller stations that send the signals locally via cables or the airwaves.
Phone:
Satellites provide in-flight phone communications on airplanes, and are often the main conduit of voice communication for rural areas and areas where phone lines are damaged after a disaster. Satellites also provide the primary timing source for cell phones and pagers.
Navigation:
Satellite-based navigation systems like the Navstar Global Positioning Systems (known colloquially as GPS) enable anyone with a hand held receiver to determine her location to within a few meters.
Business & Finance:
Communications satellites have the ability to rapidly communicate between a number of widely dispersed locations. This is an important tool, allowing big manufacturing companies and department stores to perform inventory management, provide instant credit card authorization and automated teller banking services to even small towns, pay-at-the-pump gas at freeway gas stations, and video conferencing for international corporations.
Weather:
Satellites provide meteorologists with the ability to see weather on a global scale, allowing them to follow the effects of phenomena like volcanic eruptions and burning gas and oil fields, to the development of large systems like hurricanes and El Niño. 
Climate and Environmental Monitoring:
Satellites are some of the best sources of data for climate change research. Satellites monitor ocean temperatures and prevailing currents; data acquired by satellite-borne radars were able to show sea levels have been rising by three mm a year over the last decade. Imaging satellites can measure the changing sizes of glaciers, which is difficult to do from the ground due to the remoteness and darkness of the polar regions. Satellites can determine long-term patterns of rainfall, vegetation cover, and emissions of greenhouse gases.
Safety:
Earth observation satellites can monitor ocean and wind currents as well as the extent of forest fires, oil spills, and airborne pollution; together this information helps organize emergency responders and environmental cleanup. Satellites can take the "search" out of "search and rescue" for people in distress in remote regions. Distress radio beacons directly linked to a search and rescue satellite can lead rescuers quickly and accurately to a land, sea, or air emergency location.
Land Stewardship:
Satellites can detect underground water and mineral sources; monitor the transfer of nutrients and contaminants from land into waterways; and measure land and water temperatures, the growth of algae in seas, and the erosion of topsoil from land. They can efficiently monitor large-scale infrastructure, for example fuel pipelines that need to be checked for leaks, which would require enormous hours of land- or air-based inspection. Imaging satellites produce high-resolution data of almost the entire landmass on earth; such data used to be a closely guarded military capability, but now, nearly anyone with an internet connection can find his house using Google Earth.


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