The development of celluar phones and our desire to maintain communication with others anywhere we travel has lead to new ways to link people together. Thematic Organizer Satellites have played a role in many areas of our lives during the past 40 years. It didn't matter that it was not capable of any useful task, what mattered was that it demonstrated that objects could be placed the space above your head and that those objects might be able to cause the destruction of the ground below them. Sputnik caused the United States to launch a major effort to design and build a rocket capable of sending a person to the moon. Ever hear of James Bond's Goldeneye - a fictional weapon of destruction.
Satellites also appear as the living quarters for space-based thrillers.
In real life, satellites usual make the news for one of two reasons. Either a spectacular failure - such as when Galaxy 4 in 1998 lost its orientation with the earth and celluar phone and beeper traffic was disrupted for a 24 hour time period. The other way satellites break into the news is when they acquire fantastic pictures of the universe, such as those produced by the Hubble Space Telescope. Studying Mars is interesting because it appears that Mars had a reasonable amount of water on its surface at one time. We would like to know where this water went - after all we would not want a similar phenomena to occur on the earth.