Slashdot Mirror


Telstar 4 is Down

An anonymous reader writes "Sometime this morning (Sept. 19) Telstar 4 had a major onboard failure. I just checked a few minutes ago and there are CW carriers up on 11700 MHz V & 12200 MHz H, so the spacecraft would appear to still be in its orbital slot - just no traffic. The Loral Skynet site has no mention of this yet, but supposedly Telstar 8 was already scheduled to replace T4, so they may just speed the process up. This turn of events will no doubt be of some small concern to Intelsat, who recently agreed to purchase most of Loral's US domestic fleet, including T4."

9 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What is Telstar 4? A satellite, certainly. How is it relevant to my life? The article submitter (and approver) could be a little more verbose.

    Assuming everyone knows everything you do is a sure sign of the foolish man.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  2. good way to upgrade by stonebeat.org · · Score: 2, Insightful

    breaking something, usually speeds up upgrade process.
    In IT people that a lot (especially with the servers)
    And with the recent increase in MS security patches this has become more evident. People are scrambling to upgrade/switch to better OS (like OS X, Linux etc)

  3. A fleet? by secolactico · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Ok, so I'm nitpicking here... but isn't a group a satellites called a constelation?

    --
    No sig
  4. Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is by Read+Icculus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Inference and deduction are your friends. I had no idea what they were talking about at first, as I have no knowledge of satellite stuff at all beyond common knowledge, but I actually thought for a second or two. Loral Skynet site - Hmmm Skynet site that mentions what satellites are doing and stuff. I imagine that they are some sort of satellite info site. "Telstar 8 was... scheduled to replace T4" - Telstar 8 is obviously a satellite. T4 no doubt means Telstar 4. WTF is so hard to understand about that sentence if you read the submitted paragraph?

    --
    Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
  5. Re:So what does this mean to the average user? by El · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You forgot: "Can I still download pron?"

    --

    "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

  6. Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is by Bull999999 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Stop your bitching and read up,"

    Do you really expect slashdotters to do some research before posting?

    --
    1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
  7. Re:Your big moment... by narftrek · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Some of us slashdotters enjoy stories that aren't just SCO or RIAA articles. I could actually give a shit about SCO, but I like to keep tabs on satellite news. Guess that's just another thing that seperates us engineers from the programmers :)

  8. Re:So what does this mean to the average user? by scottgfx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Quote: "Does the internet still work?"

    Has it ever?

    Slashdot: News for nerds. Stuff that matters.

    Telstar 4 DID affect my place of work. CBS backup had to be moved to Telstar 6 and WSI was moved as well. Just some of the digital data that flows into our building that doesn't go over the Internet. Do you think we would really rely on Sprint to get all of that data. They have enough trouble with our two T1 lines and the phone system here. You want every story to be about Windows patches? Telco is a lot more interesting.
    Adverage? We're talking Slashdot here!!!

    --
    It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
  9. Re:Skynet confirms its dead by Sci_Fox · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Being a scavenger, I can only ask..

    So, what can we use it for?

    Even if it no longer has power for full transmission, there's still power enough to run basic (diagnostic?) uplinks? Perhaps minimal data traffic, or ham radio?

    Best keep an eye on it anyway, it wouldn't be the first satellite to come back to life by suprise.