With the word satellite we obviously refer here to the artificial satellites, and in particular to their so called civilian applications: satellite TV, weather reporting, maps, remote sensing, reset clocks, GPS technologies (Global Positioning System: the possibility of detecting with great precision the position on earth of a machine that receives radio signals from at least three different satellites). 

The idea of a worldwide telecommunication system based on satellites stems from 1945 with the feasibility study of a global system equipped with three geostationary satellites. However, telecommunication satellites appeared only at the end of the 1950s, and were first on low Earth orbit and later on geostationary orbit. The first television broadcast across the Atlantic Ocean was in 1962, while the international organization INTELSAT (International Maritime Satellite Organization) was founded in 1964.

 

entry Satellite artificiale in the Treccani Encyclopedia