1103
NASA
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
400km is nothing, if you have/had satellite TV the signal comes from a geostationary orbit (35 786 km) and it has to get there first and if you're not exactly below the satellite it's even farther away. Streams from the ISS having low quality (do they actually have low quality?) is due to either bad cameras or cameras aging faster in space due to high energy particles hitting it.
The ISS also moves relative to the receiver, whereas geostationary satellites don't.
I feel like "moves relative" also understates just how fast it moves: ~19,000mph
It's a trade-off, either you have to do tracking and compensate for doppler shift or you have to deal with really bad SNR.