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comment by WanderingEng
WanderingEng  ·  2269 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Friday Fun Facts

The Iridium satellites were so named because initially they thought they'd need 77 satellites, and iridium has the atomic number 77. However, they were ultimately able to do it with 66 satellites. Dysprosium satellite cluster wouldn't have rolled off the tongue so easily.

I've used the Iridium satellites. My backcountry satellite tracker/communicator uses it.





wasoxygen  ·  2266 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Iridium Global Satellite Phone System Fault Management

    Iridium posed a severe challenge for network management, because the network is so dynamic. There was concern that fault and performance management might be too complex to even be practical. Traditional management solutions all assumed a fairly fixed network, especially at its core. But here, even the “backbone” was moving.