Support Satellites (Superpowers)

Aetherilae Joviorum, or support satellites, essentially includes any kind of man-made orbital object designed for the general maintenance or advancement of its Empire of origin. Therefore, strictly military satellites are not included on this page.

Currently, only three Empires have the capability of sending up satellites into space : the Mayan Empire; the Roman Empire and the Japanese Empire, all three of which make up the membership of the Foedus Terrae (Alliance of Earth). This makes the Alliance the primary organization for the control of space travel, something which is a contributing factor to the lack of any spatial powers outside this organization.

Though the first man-made object was launched into space in 1935, it wasn't for another two years that an actual satellite would be put into orbit by man. Both these achievements belong to the Mayan Empire. This Tepeu-class of satellites had the design goal of studying the upper-atmosphere, and eventually outer space itself. Thus making them the first class of support satellites in history.

Aetherilae Exquaesitiorum
As previously mentioned, Research Satellites were the first kind of orbiting object built by humans. Using a constantly changing assortment of scientific equipment, from chemical sensors to ion detectors, they have continuously been on the frontline of human advancement in space.

The Mayan Tepeu-class satellites largely dominated this field, though the Romans got in on the action in 1939 with the start of their Apollo-series of satellites. These two series of satellites would later form the basis of the unmanned probes that they would later send to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

The next type of research satellites to be launched were of the telescope nature. In October of 1943 the Romans launched the Osiris, working within the visible light spectrum. This was the beginning of the Propositia Vates (Seer Project), with the goal of covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum through satellites. By 1954 the project was announced a success. The other of satellites for the project is : 1943 (Visible), 1948 (Infrared), 1949 (X-ray or Radiographema), 1951 (Ultraviolet or Radioeli and Radio) and 1954 (Gamma or Alpha).

Though the Mayans made their own attempts at creating orbital telescopes, it was eventually abandoned for lack of funding once satellites of the visible, x-ray and radio spectrum had been launched. The Japanese as well only sent up two telescopes, one infrared and one visible. This is a reflection of the Japanese ideology on space, and really most other realms of research as well. To them, nothing was worth looking into unless there was a practical, or even better commercial, value to the endeavor. It is this way of thinking that led to Japanese to launch the first meteorological satellite in 1946.

The field of meteorological satellites is however one field in which the Romans would quickly come to dominate, in no small part to their advanced robotic and computational technologies. Though they hadn't launched one till 1951, by 1960 they had coverage of the entire planet and were able to predict weather at a further distance into the future than any OTL nation not using the Farmer's Almanac.

Aetherilae Epistularum
Communication satellites were the second kind to be created by any space-faring nation, though these were the first satellites launched by the Romans. In 1938 the Romans launched C-1, the first in their planned network of communication satellites.

Although the Romans already had an extensive communication network maintained by fiber-optic cables, this was starting to be taken up by the Telaoria Network. Therefore the Romans put all their efforts into the launching of more and more communication satellites until 1941, when the 100th one was launched, giving the Romans worldwide coverage.

Though this sufficed for a while, the technology soon became outdated and plans for a new network were quickly put in the works. The process began anew in January of 1960. Eventually, by 1964, 440 new communication satellites were in orbit and the old ones had re-entered the atmosphere.

The Mayan Empire launched their first communication satellite in 1945. Although the Romans managed to put latitudinal limits on the Mayans reach into space, by 1955 the entire Mayan Empire was connected for the first time in its own communication network. The Japanese would follow-up with the launch of Kizuna in 1946, a full network being finally set-up by the year 1959.