Can someone please explain to this non-rocket scientist what a IridiumNEXT satellite is and what it does in plain english please?
Low earth network of 70 satellite(s) grid which can communicate with each other and earth.
Applications, telecommunications applications, Internet, navigation, possible radio and television..
Radio and television are guesses on my part.
If someone sees an error here, please correct me and add more information too. Thanks.
Those ten are the first in over 60 of the next generation of iridium satellite phone birds. these new birds also carry substantial secondary payloads these ten have the space component of the new real time aviation tracking system that will eliminate mysteries like MH370. they also have bigger phased array antennas to allow much higher data rates all over the planet currently IR has a 2.4kbs rate.
these birds will also continue to broadcast the IGPS data stream that the military has been using created by Boeing as high integrity GPS pseudolites. The iridum signal is almost a million times stronger when received on the earths surface. So much so it works indoors and inside metal shipping containers. civilians have no access to that signal but these is talk of allowing aviation to use it as it is essentially jam proofed. at any given time there’s at least two IR birds visible over most of the earths surface. it is possible using just one IR bird’s signal to define ones position unlike regular gps that takes at least 4 due to the IR bird’s doppler signal shift and other technical means exclusive to th DoD.