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ESA to Give New Life to Old Satellites
JPNews writes "The European Space Agency is designing a program (www.esa.int) to re-configure dying television transmission satellites to be used as a XM Radio-like satellite radio network. 'Once in position, 35,000 km away in space, TV satellites will remain in orbit forever, but their useful life amounts to 15 years or less... further life can be squeezed from a low-propellant TV satellite switched over to mobile digital radio broadcasting where precision position control is less important.'"
It's good that they are looking at reusing some of the old junk that we can't effectively remove from space.
Perhaps NASA could sell off some of their old, unused satellites to get (some of) the funding the need?
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
I am a little suspicious of motives and lock-in though.
If these are up for a further 15 years, is there any more support after that?
Or would we be locked-in to using a system that by then is even more out of date.
Interesting idea, but care needs to be taken
It would be quite cool, depending on the frequencies, if they could open the sattelites up to hams. There are a few sattelites here and there available for amateur use, but something launched by the ESA is probably waay cooler.
Of course, this all depends on the ability of them to switch which frequencies the sattelites use--I imagine they weren't originally designed to use Ham frequencies. As for "sloppy" orbits, we hams typically have fairly sophisticated tracking equipment: a 486 pc, running any one the free tracking wares, connected to a dual-axis antenna rotator. Makes it a challenge!!
Recursive (adj.): see 'Recursive'
just wondering how long they think they can stop people from hacking the xm network...
broadcasted stuff has almost always been 110% easier to beat (read: harder to find the pirates, arrrrrg!) than conventional cable/wired networks.
Honestly, I really hope so.
I don't think we should completely abandon manned space missions, but the ISS is going to cost $100B over its lifetime-- figuring that the cost of a 4 year university education is $100k, we could create a million more scientists on earth-- and think how much that could do to solve the autonomous control and robotics problems that currently limit unmanned missions.
Right now, basically 2 of the 3 members of the ISS crew are dedicated to doing things to keep the ISS running. Surely with $100B we could get as much real space science done as that one individual who's concentrating on science on the ISS over these next 10 years can, right?
Let's learn what we can now cheaply, and regroup in 10-25 years and go to Mars, or form a colony on the moon, or do something else really radical that broadens the future for mankind.
When you get a group, such as the ESA, doing that, even better.
Kudos to you sir(s).
But according to my education these satellites loose power and can no longer fight earth's gravity after a while, which causes them to fall into the earth's atmosphere and dissentigrate on reentry.
I have a friend that works with satellites for a living.. maybe I should go ask him to be sure...
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
I'll agree. Looking back on history, it just seems like there was no motivation like competition.
David Brin points out America is a peculiar society in that its populace considers its golden age to be in the future. But I wonder if that is really so. We already say "back in the day we were on the Moon".
I'm not saying we are past our peak, but I wonder if something like going to the moon will be where historians put American's peak or if we are going to have the courage to do more.
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OnRoad: Reporting what happens in America when the police get out of hand.
Are there any regulations regarding dead satellites? Once a bird is placed in a (mostly) stable geosync orbit, it's going to remain in the general neighborhood for quite a while. I would think it wise to require these satellites to bump themselves down into the atmosphere when they've reached the end of their useful lifetime. The more junk that accumulates up there, the greater the chances for impact-related disasters. Last year ~75 civil satellites were launched.. I expect the total is higher.
Chances are that as time goes by, our travels out into space will increase, putting more craft at risk. It'd be a shame for future generations to be stuck dodging a (relatively) thick field of high-speed objects ranging in size from marbles to large houses. Things to keep in mind...
Adam "Fogie" Fogler -- Professional Paid College Student
I'm wondering how close to XM will this be...is it going to come with the monthly service fee? Because that's my biggest beef with XM. I understand that they need to have some way of making money, and if people are willing to shell out their hard-earned cash to get a couble hundred radio stations, that's fine with me, but I'm not willing to pay $10 a month when I have a host of perfectly viable radio stations to listen to with the equipment I have already, for practically nothing. (Except for those public radio donations. That's a good cause.) Maybe if I was a more hardcore radio listener...or if I lived somewhere that didn't have a good radio selection...I dunno. Does anyone who uses XM want to explain why they think it's worth the fee? I'm a bit curious.
Well it ain`t so easy it, this way we should focus on an economic basis, instead of startrek dreams.
For example thought economically why do you need men in space after all? Answer, you don't. To launch satellits, or to make scientific experimiments you do not need a man in space.
IMHO the ESA has done the right decision. To focus all energies on unmanned missions. This way you can do efectivly everything the NASA can, but are cheaper and more secure. (For science automatic labours are possible, and if zou think of the place and weight saved by letting away the humans and the life support this pays of quite fast.)
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
However, ESA's biggest achievement of all, explained Bonacina, lies not in any one particular space project. Rather, it's the fact that 15 European nations have successfully worked together, and in cooperation with other non-European space programs, to reach a common goal.
That is just politically correct rubbish. The taxpayers of those 15 countries don't care that all the ESA employees have a group hug every morning, we care about actual results and effective use of resources. It's like telling an athlete that "it's not the winning that counts". Hell, get any bunch of people together from 15 countries, give them a budget of billions and tell them to have a good time, and they'll "cooperate" just fine!
I wonder why (comm, spy) sats are not designed to dock with a small propellant containing vehicle that could be launched midway through the sats life to replenish propellant, since this seems to be one of the main limitting factors of sat. usefulness, and launching such a vehicle would probably cost a lot less than a whole new sat.
After all, the Russian's do something very similar with their Progress cargo ships that dock automatically with the ISS and had also done this with Mir before.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
These TV sats are perfect for homebrew links.
When you take a low bandwidth signal and spread
it over the entire transponders bandwidth it
won't raise the noise floor enough to be detectable.
(Low bandwidth requires low power and if you spread the signal it raises the noise floor by an undetectable amount). They'll never see a 10kbit/sec signal!