World’s biggest telecommunication satellite takes to the skies for a phone’s cause
Built by TerreStar Networks, and launched with a little help from the Ariane 5 rocket, the world’s biggest commercial telecommunication satellite, the TerreStar-1, was launched with a mission to provide assistance to special handsets in North America. Weighing about 7 tons at launch, the TerreStar-1 is devised to unfurl an umbrella-like antenna reflector spanning 60 feet in a four-hour-long procedure, and thereafter to pick and release signals to a smartphone-sized handset (which is the first full-mode terrestrial/satellite handset, the size of a BlackBerry Curve).
The device will work like any regular phone, but where the network is unavailable, the terrestrial handset will connect with the satellite, but it needs a clear sky to do so, problem, problem?
Tags: phone, satellite, terrestar
