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Dr. Dish
DR. DISH
Why do you need a big antenna?
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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Shannon McConnell
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David Martin
Last Updated: 17 December 2003