Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth

Dig deep on Google Earth and you'll inevitably find a surprise or two. Maybe you're looking at far-flung islands in the middle of an ocean or checking in on something closer to home. A few years ago, online sleuths found an image of a B-2 stealth bomber in flight over Missouri. The aircraft is smeared in the image because it was in motion, while the farm fields below appear as crisp as any other view on Google Earth. There's something else that now appears on Google Earth. Zoom in over rural North Texas, and you'll find a satellite. It appears five times in different colors, each projected over wooded bottomlands in a remote wildlife refuge about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Dallas. Satellites in low-Earth orbit soar up to 40 times higher than a B-2 bomber and travel about 30 times faster. But there are more than 9,300 active satellites currently in orbit, and thousands more space debris objects, compared to 19 operational B-2 bombers in the Air Force's inventory. Relative ve ... Read full article.