Technological support! Aerospace technology helps football fans worldwide enjoy the exciting World Cup.

Satellite direct broadcast digital television：Watch the game without leaving home

On July 10, 1962, NASA successfully launched a satellite named Telstar 1 into a near-Earth elliptical orbit using a Delta rocket. This was the first successful and effective civilian communications satellite launched specifically for AT&T. During its operation, Telstar 1 was the first to broadcast television images, telephone calls, and telegraph images from space, completing the first transatlantic television broadcast. It became the first operational direct broadcast communications satellite in human history. Today, when we widely use satellite television to watch the World Cup, Telstar 1 can be considered the pioneer of all of this.

In 1970, the Mexico World Cup was broadcast live globally via satellite television for the first time. At that time, black and white televisions were still the dominant form of television worldwide. To make the football easier to recognize on black and white televisions, a black and white ball was designed and eventually named the Telstar football. The Telstar 18 football used in the 2018 Russia World Cup was also developed from this design.

Currently, satellite digital television, cable digital television, and terrestrial digital television constitute the three service models of digital television. Satellite digital television is a form of broadcast television that uses geostationary satellites to compress and transmit digitally encoded signals to users. It primarily operates in two ways: one is to transmit the digital television signal to a cable television headend, where the cable television station converts it into an analog signal before delivering it to the user's home; this method has been widely used in countries around the world for many years. The other method is to transmit the digital television signal directly to the user's home.

my country's first digital television satellite was "ChinaSat-9". As a highly efficient, long-life, and highly reliable direct broadcast satellite, it transmits program signals unencrypted, eliminating the need for a television station to relay them directly to households. Residents only need to install a small dish (about half a meter in diameter) – a satellite television signal ground receiver – to watch television programs. Compared to cable and terrestrial digital television, the biggest advantage of satellite digital television is its vast coverage area. "ChinaSat-9" increased my country's broadcast television coverage to over 98%, effectively solving the problem of many remote rural areas in China being unable to receive live television programs.

During the 2022 Qatar World Cup, satellites such as ChinaSat 6B, ChinaSat 6C, ChinaSat 6D, ChinaSat 9, ChinaSat 9B, and AsiaSat 6C undertook the task of transmitting broadcast television satellite signals, providing safe and stable broadcast television signal transmission services to the general public and ensuring the broadcast of the World Cup and other events.

Remote sensing satellite images：Open the "God's-eye view" of the game.

Using remote sensing satellites, people can enjoy watching football matches from a "God's-eye view." Currently, optical remote sensing satellites have very high resolution; for example, the highest resolution of the civilian WorldView series of remote sensing satellites is 0.3 meters. A football with a diameter of 0.22 meters can almost fill one pixel in a remote sensing image. Clearly seeing the position of the football and players in a remote sensing image should not be a problem. However, to achieve higher resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, the acquisition time for each remote sensing image is relatively long, preventing the refresh rate of a television signal. Nevertheless, through remote sensing satellite images, we can still enjoy a "God's-eye view" and witness the excitement of the World Cup.

▲Through remote sensing imagery with a resolution of 0.3 meters,

It can clearly distinguish information such as the goal, goalkeeper, and formation.

At 8:07 PM on November 20, 2022, the Jilin-1 Gaofen 03C02 satellite captured images of the brightly lit Gulf Stadium, the venue for the World Cup opening ceremony, over Qatar. The opening ceremony had just concluded, and the opening match was underway. Through satellite imagery, we experienced the World Cup opening ceremony from a space perspective.

The widespread application of satellite technology has significantly propelled the commercialization of the sports industry. Satellite television broadcasting offers the sports industry enormous commercial value, unlike traditional video recording; for example, the global broadcast fee for the World Cup can reach billions of dollars. From the public's perspective, it has profoundly changed people's lives. In the past, many people in remote and underdeveloped areas lacked television signals and often had to rely on the next day's news and newspapers to learn about their teams' performances in the World Cup. However, with the increasing prevalence of satellite communication technology, it is believed that this autumn, even more people will be able to enjoy this grand spectacle of the World Cup on their televisions.

Some content in this article is sourced from: Guangming.com, Haike News, and China Aerospace Science Popularization Network.

If there is any copyright infringement, please contact us to delete it.