Starting this week, the editors at Satellite TODAY.com would like to present you with a list of what we found were interesting and relevant reads from the Web every Monday.

Cape Canaveral AFS a crucial player in bin Laden takedown – Florida Today.com

Helicopters flying U.S. commandos to Osama bin Laden’s compound were guided through Pakistani airspace by Navstar GPS satellites launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Top-secret spacecraft flown from the cape intercepted cell phone calls made by a trusted courier who inadvertently led U.S. intelligence agents to bin Laden’s high-security safe haven… read more at FloridaToday.com

How satellites helped get Osama – MSNBC.com

The climax of the Osama drama took place on the ground in Pakistan, but the gutsy military operation would have been impossible to pull off without a web of orbiting satellites. The proof of that emerged today in accounts of the plan to get Osama bin Laden: Once the CIA and the U.S. military focused in on bin Laden’s potential hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, views from above could be turned into a detailed map of the premises, most likely with the help of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The map was so detailed that the operation’s planners could build a mockup of the compound for rehearsals… read more at MSNBC.com

Satellite communication, a failsafe option for disaster management and emergency response – AMEinfo.com

It is widely acknowledged that during natural disasters, satellite technology plays a crucial role in re-establishing communication links, for both disaster victims and those involved in emergency response efforts. During GSSF, a three-day event being held at ADNEC in Abu Dhabi on 9-11 May, leading experts will discuss how satellite communications play an important role in disaster relief, particularly in areas where terrestrial lines and mobile telephone infrastructure are destroyed, as was the case for virtually the entire east coast of Japan after it was hit by the devastating Tsunami recently… read more at AMEinfo.com

Satellite Imagery Shows How Tornadoes Slashed Across Alabama, Mississippi – Universetoday.com

Some extraordinary satellite and radar imagery shows how the deadly tornado supercell slashed through Alabama and Mississippi last week, as in the image above, leaving a gash of exposed ground and destruction that is visible from space. The latest reports indicate fatalities from the outbreak now exceed 342 people, and according to the Washington Post, this is the most people killed by tornadoes in a two-day period since April 5-6, 1936 when 454 people died. The image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 28. See more imagery below… read more at Universetoday.com