Geostationary GPS Satellite Galaxy 15 Out of Control 379
Bruce Perens writes "The Galaxy 15 commercial satellite has not responded to commands since solar flares fried its CPU in April, and it won't turn off. Intelsat controllers moved all commercial payloads to other birds except for WAAS, a system that adds accuracy to GPS for landing aircraft and finding wayward geocaches. Since the satellite runs in 'bent pipe' mode, amplifying wide bands of RF that are beamed up to it, it is likely to interfere with other satellites as it crosses their orbital slots on its way to an earth-sun Lagrange point, the natural final destination of a geostationary satellite without maneuvering power." (More below.)
Bruce continues: "The only payload that is still deliberately active on the satellite is its WAAS repeater. An attempt to overload the satellite and shut it down on May 3 caused a Notice to Airmen regarding the unavailability of WAAS for an hour. Unsaid is what will happen to WAAS, and for how long, when the satellite eventually loses its sun-pointing capability, expected later this year, and stops repeating the GPS correction signal. Other satellites can be moved into Galaxy 15's orbital slot, but it is yet unannounced whether the candidates bear the WAAS payload."
Not necessarily... (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1998, Galaxy IV blew out [wikipedia.org], which controlled commercial communications for a metric assload of services (including my former employer's dealership communications network, FordStar [fordstarconnect.com]). I (and every other remote admin) got a $50 bounty per dish that we hurriedly re-pointed to a different satellite. Cleaned the whole thing up across the global network (four continents) in less than three weeks.
I'm fairly sure that cable TV, which has more sats on tap and relatively less dishes to re-position (and nobody has to crawl on top of a zillion roofs with a wrench and a compass in hand), could likely recover in very short order - probably hours.
That said, there's always the danger of a chain reaction (after all, there's a LOT of satellites in geosync orbit) - if not at this time, then certainly in the coming future, as the numbers continue to increase.
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thing is... that 1998 event left several lesser-known cable channels holding the back as bigger-money former Galaxy IV customers used their pre-empt rights on the other birds to keep themselves on the air. A natural supply/demand price increase situation arose from this.
The SkyTel service never recovered. Customers of that service were migrated to cellular-based pagers.
Oh the scrambled pr0n (Score:1, Interesting)
I remember turning my big satellite dish towards galaxy sats. Trying to unscramble the pr0n channels. I sold all my equipment years ago but still miss the big monster and waiting on it to lock in to whatever satellite I was after.
I nearly killed my wife with my C-Band satellite dish. She was on the riding lawnmower and I moved the dish to a satellite that required it to aim very low in the southern sky. She didnt see it moving in time as she was looking at the right front wheel because she thought it was getting low on air. A trip to the hospital with 15 stitches and a mild concussion and it was time to sell and buy a DirectTV dish. Looking back I should have just gotten rid of my wife. It would have been a better deal in the long run.
Tuning... Tuning... Tuning... Tuning... G15 CH40 crap on tv tonight. Tuning... Tuning... Tuning... G17 CH25 Hell yeah porkys is on (dont remember what all channels but it was good times).
Light pressure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not Sun-Earth Lagrange points (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where'd my cable channels go? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, they moved G-12, an older sat available as a spare, into 131 degrees W to take the place of G-11. The only action required by cable companies was to make sure their dishes were peaked so that while the transition was happening there was enough wiggle room to see both birds at the same time.
Re:Not Sun-Earth Lagrange points (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where'd my cable channels go? (Score:3, Interesting)
Last I checked, the FCC only mandated the switch to digital over the air and had nothing to say what format was broadcast over private networks. That decision is just based on greed. (more free bandwidth and more converter box rental fees.)
Allow me to expand on that. It's sad that just digital SD and not full HDTV is the only "mandated" standard when both could have been forced given a couple more years to allow for larger HDTV penetration. Forced unavailability of old 4:3 on the PC and LCD industry was more effective to force us all to a 16:9. These wider but shorter screens are little more than paperweights when you consider that larger compression-based distortion and forced resolution stretches are more obvious on them than our old TV's... we have almost no programming to use the technology we purchased. Over the air HD is hit or miss, and most people continue to use cable because lots of the new OtA power transmitters suck.
I want cablecos to explain what my bill will look like the day Standard Definition gets truly "deprecated." It should force them to remove all those duplicate non-HD channels, or upgrade my free channels to their currently payfor HD clones at no extra cost --I seriously doubt the latter will be taken, but they can't justify pulling the plug like the US government did to analog TV across the country in June 2009.
Years after first generation HDTV sets have arrived in stores and reached to reasonable prices, networks still do not transmit in HD even 1/2 of their programming (I'm not talking 10 year old classics, but stuff recorded recently on what should be all HD cameras by now.) Weekend sports and local news are HD in many channels, but makes up for only a few weekly hours in our 24*7 blocks. While all the 9-to-5 worker drones are too busy to notice, networks are chugging along at the same old cheap non-HD resolutions until the weekend fake-out. Whatever non-basic HD is out there comes at a premium price. The two big networks for Spanish-only immigrants have even less total HD programming. Cable-subsized television for local community programming has 0 HD programs even in New York city. With no HD deadline in sight, it seems we were all duped by LCD-manufacturers and cablecos. Our second generation HD LCD sets will have undergone slow pixel death by natural dimming before governments force all cameras in every local HD program to actually transmit in HD. meanwhile, it's cries from distortion and previously unnecessary stretching for all of us.
Re:Target practice? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Target practice? (Score:1, Interesting)
Or better yet the Corrupt News Network.
Re:Not Sun-Earth Lagrange points (Score:5, Interesting)
The gravitational effect of the moon is indeed very significant here, but it is periodic. (The net result is that the lunar perturbation makes a periodic change to the inclination of the orbit).
The drift in longitude is due to the Earth's non-sphericity, not the moon.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Target practice? (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting idea... I do see several possible problems with it though...