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DR. DISH

Why do you need a big antenna?
<IMG SRC="../images/drdish3-large.jpg" WIDTH="450" HEIGHT="400" VSPACE="5" BORDER="0" ALT="Picture of Dr. Dish"><BR> Dr. Dish here! Did you know that the farther away a spacecraft is, the bigger the antenna you need to pick up its radio signals? For a spacecraft in Earth orbit, like the ones people use to get TV shows, you need only a small dish. If that satellite were at the moon, hundreds of thousands of miles away, you'd need a dish as big as a two-story house! And if it were millions of miles away, like Mars or the other planets, you'd need a dish that's ten times that big - like the ones at the Deep Space Network!
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