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Iridium Satellite Breaks Up Over Arctic
Julius X writes: "Early Wednesday morning, the first Iridium satellite to reenter the atmposphere broke up over the Arctic Ocean at 9:44 GMT. The satellite had failed just two months after its launch in September 1998, and had been tumbling out of control ever since. The report here on Space.com provides more detail, and says that another satellite is due to come down in the next three weeks or so."
penguins live in the Antarctic, and this was the Arctic. North vs South pole.
Chapter 11 doesn't really permit the kind of activity you're describing, by the way. Nearly all Chapter 11 plans have to be approved by the debtors (and if they're not, the judge has to decide that it's an exceptionally fair plan, and the debtors are simply being malicious in refusing to approve), and if they don't approve (and the courts don't force it), then you'll end up under Chapter 7 instead. Chapter 7 is total liquidation. Actually, about 90% of Chapter 11 filings end up under failing to get approval.
I can't find any specific information, but based on certain information (eg, the fact that Iridium, LLC has sold their satellite constellation, without which they have no real business) I conclude they've filed for Chapter 7. The owner of Iridium Satellite, LLC is one Dan Colussy, a former Pan Am president, who to the best of my knowledge was never affiliated with Iridium, LLC in any manner. My guess is that Mr. Colussy wanted to keep the brand name, which is why the companies have such similar names.
Standard disclaimer: IANAL, but I was raised by one, and I've worked with companies going through bankrupcy before.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/sto ries/20001130/388184.html
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If I'm wrong, here's the math I used:
1/(1-(0.9999^70)) = 143.35
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
A polar orbit usually indicates something that's taking a lot of pictures of the whole planet. For sneaky purposes or not. :^)
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The shareholder is always right.
"I like them odds..." - Homer Simpson...
But one thing to consider is whether the damage from a fallen sattelite is covered by one's home owner insurance? Auto? Normally falling objects from the sky have been named as evil portents, and things have been struck down by an act of gh*d. But this isn't an act of gh*d, it required a conscious act to direct the sattelite to re-enter.
Would I be able to sue a company that has gone defunct, or the person who actually pushed the button? I'm just curious if anybody knew of where the liability laid. I know that some insurance companys can tend to be a bit on the anal side when handing out money, but what if I or a loved one were hit by one of these sattelites? Would they still pay out? I should check my policy a little closer.
How many more Iridium sattelites are in orbit though? How many other 1 in 10000 chances do we get over the next few years as each is de-orbited?
Just asking...
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
Some people seem to be making the mistake of thinking that this was a planned re-entry as part of the supposed de-orbiting that was planned before Iridium Satellite LLC bought out what was left of the Iridium company a month or so ago.
This satellite was one of the satellites that had failed, two months after its launch in 1998. It never worked, and subsequently has been tumbling about in orbit around Earth without control nor function for the last two years. Just another piece of space junk, basically, which only now has reentered our atmosphre.
The functioning satellites are still planned to stay in orbit, and providing the service that they were originally designed for.
Just thought I'd clear that up.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Chicken Little was right?
Say, wasn't it an Iridium meteorite that killed all the dinosaurs?
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
They say there is a one-in-10000 chance being hit by a falling iridium spacecraft. Anyone knows how big the chance is to win in lotto?
...whatever ;)
The satellite had failed just two months after its launch in September 1998, and had been tumbling out of control ever since.
That sounds an awful lot like the story of the company itself and in particular, their stock.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
We've been trying to figure out what the (apparently) satellites are that you can see at night traveling from north to south/south to north. Speedy little guys that go by every 20 minutes or so. Are those Iridium or something else? Anyone know?
Is the webmaster of space.com reading this? The site looks nice, there is a lot of information, but it is pure navigational hell. I feel like I am going in circles. Hundreds of things to click on, but they don't seem to get me anywhere
Doesn't that translate to 600,000 people being hurt? Sounds like a major catastrophe to me. Damn better wear my hardhat.
Didn't Dan just buy Iridium?
Must be a real bummer to spend a pile o' money on a bunch of fire-sale satellites, figuring that, hey, they're basically unused, gotta be a good deal.
Only to have the wheels fall off as soon as they get outta the parking lot.
I think he outta go back to the store and demand a full refund.
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Certainly seems like it!
Arr! Damn you, This falling Iridium satellite has just cut a gap into the hull of my boat. Arr!
I saw a satelite re-enter the atmosphere last year at Burning Man, in Nevada; it was surreal. At first, it looked as if a 747 was comming over a mountain range, but as if the aircraft was only a few hundred metres up, but as it moved you could tell it was something else. It was quite beautiful. It's unfortunate that it's too dangerous to bring these things down near populated areas - a re-entry is definitly something that I'd LOVE to see again.
Generally the satellite business has benefited not so much from technological advances but from industrial maturity. It is now possible to build satellites with a greater variety of off-the-shelf components, which are able to be tested and made reliable at a much lower cost than one-offs. Some satellites are designed for lifetimes up to 15 years. Still, a more typical design lifetime is between 5 and 10 years.
The trouble is that designing longer lifetime into satellites actually is not cost-effective. Technological advances or economic changes on Earth could completely eclipse a satellite's originally-intended functionality. In the case of Iridium, a $5 billion LEO satellite network that took a decade to build was eclipsed by cellular networks spreading worldwide during the same time period. Even though the overall cost of the cell network is probably greater for the same approximate coverage, its per-customer cost ends up being much lower. By the same token, a weather satellite returning 10m resolution images of the atmosphere could be designed for 20 years of life, but if ten years from now the market will only buy 5m resolution images, that satellite is useless.
If you are to contrast Iridium with the Pioneer program, you should also consider the failures of that program. No satellite or interplanetary probe is invulnerable. In most cases, the best defense isn't higher reliability, but greater volume. A satellite may be expensive in the event of a failure, but unlike humans, it is not irreplaceable.
Think long and hard about the technology that you were personally using 15 or 20 years ago, and how much you'd pay now for that functionality. Eight-track tape players for music? Betamax VCR? Non-cellular radio telephone? TRS-80 computer?
Don't be so sure that longevity is a good thing for all technology!
Iridium was a good idea. It was just an unlucky one. Lots of telephone companies in the 19th century failed, too, but we all use Bell technology today.
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{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
It says in the article that Iridium LLC went bankrupt and Iridium Satellite LLC bought up the assets for $25M but Boeing is still doing the upkeep on the satellites and Motorola is providing equipment for a subscriber service run off the satellites. Now is it just me, or does this just sound like they filled for Chapt. 11 and sold the company to themselves to try and reorganize and screw people that have IOU's with the company?
Does anyone have any solid information on what is really going on with Iridium? I'd like to see what the current plans are for what they're going to do with it.
I need a funny sig
The juxtaposition raises a few questions in my mind, most immediately, how much faith should we place in the reliability of our spacecraft? Or, more generally, has there been a change in the quality surrounding spacecraft over the past 20 years?
I am not talking about single event errors (explosions, failed mars probes), but instead thinking about how Iridium could have spent so much money and then not provided any real benefit to the creators. (I am assume and believe that most would consider the Pioneer missions successful to all parties involved in it.)