No need to keep operators up half the night in Britain when the rotation of the earth provides a wide-awake American alternative.

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The key property of a satellite orbiting precisely 35, 786 km (22, 240 miles) above the equator is its speed, which mimics the rotation of the Earth below.

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"Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass affects the Earth's rotation, " Benjamin Fong Chao, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said while explaining the phenomenon in 2005.

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Use a photographic plate to record an image from a zenith-pointing telescope, and you will end up with a streaky image, as a result of the earth's rotation.

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By launching closer to the equator, the rocket receives a bigger boost from the Earth's rotation, meaning it can lift nearly double the mass of a normal Baikonur payload - a maximum of three tonnes, as opposed to 1.7 tonnes, into a geosynchronous orbit 36, 000km above the Earth.

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RadioAstron will also examine pulsars and the outer regions of spiral galaxies in order to get more precise measurements on their rate of rotation and distance from earth.

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