Iridium 77 Iridium 77 Iridium 77 is a communications Satellite which is part of a satellite constellation known as Iridium, named after the 77th chemical element of the periodic table, "iridium". It was launched in 1998 and as of 2014, operational. It is owned and funded by Iridium, a communications company. Iridium 77 is a part of a space-based communications system called Iridium. Conceived, designed, and built by Motorola, the Iridium system provides wireless, mobile communications through a network of 66 satellites in polar, low-Earth orbits. Inaugurated in November 1998, under the auspices of Iridium LLC, this complex space system allowed callers
Chemical element meaning "no life") for "nitrogen". For purposes of international communication and trade, the official names of the chemical elements both ancient and more recently recognized are decided by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which has decided on a sort of international English language, drawing on traditional English names even when an element's chemical symbol is based on a Latin or other traditional word, for example adopting "gold" rather than "aurum" as the name for the 79th element (Au). IUPAC prefers the British spellings "aluminium" and "caesium" over the U.S. spellings "aluminum" and "cesium", and the U.S.