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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."
My girlfriend always told me that when I talk tech with fellow tech-heads I make no sense at all.
"It's hard for me to believe it's even English you're speaking. I don't recognize any of the words."
Reading this Slashdot post just made me understand what she means.
It's like a bad sci-fi screenplay!
(Telstar? CW carriers? 11700 MHz V & 12200 MHz H? orbital slot? Intelsat? Loral's US domestic fleet?)
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!
Loral Skynet site has no mention of this yet, but supposedly Telstar 8 was already scheduled to replace T4 Already at the T4? Did I miss the T2?
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Interested in AI? MACR
Guys, please stop playing with your Wifi devices.
See the results...
{{.sig}}
This is a crisis of earth-shattering proportions for many.
:-)
One of Telstar 4's nicknames in the industry is "nookiesat" -- as it carries several of the leading porn channels in the US.
When was 7 I'd dance to it all around the house in my footie pajamas. This behaviour only stopped recently.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Yes, but don't worry ... It'll be back.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
that would be a hell of a hurricane if its damaging satalites!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Does the internet still work?
Can we still download the latest Windows security patches?
Do we still get stupid invoices from sco.com?
-- Rushdan
Astronomers from Tacoma to Vladivostok have just reported an ionic disturbance in the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt. Scientists are recommending that necessary precautions be taken.
Hope this helps.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also irrelevant.
Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden to sedulously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.
Or something like that...
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)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
For all of you who keep asking, "What is telstar?" - here's the results of a Google:
h tml
http://roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~dglover/sat/telstar.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Telstar 4 is one of the most heavily used TV satellites. We had to move our channels over to Telstar 6 for the time being. (I work for the Erotic Networks) It caries many of the east coast ABC and CBS feeds. I'm sure they were scrambling to find alternate carriers just like we were this morning.
"A communications disruption could mean only one thing . . . invasion."
or
"It's like in chess: First, you strategically position your pieces and when the timing is right you strike. They're using this signal to syncronize their efforts and in 5 hours the countdown will be over"
"Where is my mind?"
"They're using our own satellites against us!"
- Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
Enjoy the silence while it lasts ...
Rejoice! That was the satellite that Major League Baseball was using to spy on us.
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
...The opening sequence to Terminator 4: Rise of the Voting Machines?
why can't they just have some entry-level admin reboot it?
cycle the power, voila, no big deal.
oh, wait...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've heard porn was on there, and PBS broadcasts (today's schedule) using Telstars, but is that really vital? I mean, none of the internet is down, and telephone services still work. I understand that PBS is educational, but the vital services in a disaster would be news (only affected if Telstar 4 carried news), telephone, food (I don't think Telstars carry commercial transactions), water (ditto), and shelter (THAT doesn't need a Telstar).
BTW, I just checked w/ New Frontier Media (they provide those porn channels) and the channels have already been rerouted to Telstar 6.
:-)
Obviously the satellite industry has its priorities straight.
This is pulled from one of the links. Distance learning... who needs it anyway!
Telstar 4
77 W (in 2003)
Began service: 11/95
Transponders: 24 C-band @ 36 MHz
16 Ku-band @ 54MHz
Coverage: Continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and into Canada.
Markets: Robust broadcast and syndication neighborhood anchored by ABC and CBS; host to SNG, data and distance learning applications.
Here's a page with information on the television signals carried by Telstar 4:
http://www.lyngsat.com/t4.shtml
The last time a Telstar satelite went out of alignment about 3/4ths of the credit card processing in the US went offline. Many banks and gas stations relay their CC processing through transpoders on one of the Telstar satelites instead of dedicating a phone line on each end of the connection. It looks like T-4 is used by ABC and CBS for network programming. See This for more info.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
But what does Telstar DO? I mean, what are the downlink transmissions that you would try to receive? I've heard that it's famous for porn, and I know PBS uses Telstars (including 4) for broadcasting, but what else is there?
Please stand by.
Quick, call Jeff Goldblum!
He might be able to find the hidden carrier signal the alien fleet uses to coordinate the attack.
Well... now that that's over with, nothing left to do but go get a life, I suppose.
Telstar 4 has mutinied and is orchestrating the robot rebellion against humanity. The Loral Global Alliance faction's Loral SKYNET program has gone too far this time.
Looking at Telstar 4's coverage map, it's clear that SKYNET plans to strike first in an east-west corridor bounded by New Mexico and Ohio; the killing robot machines will move outward until they capture most of Canada, half of Mexico, and all of Hawaii.
Save us, Terminate SKYNET!
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Maybe they went out of business... they've been know for criminal activities...
MoFscker
Here...
Here...
And here...
Telstar 4 is/was a satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the US. The satellite is used for television transmission. Signals are sent up from television facilities, bounced off the bird (nick for a satellite), and then the signal is recieved by cable companies and TV stations for relay to your house.
The main power bus on Telstar 4 died. This means it does not have the power to rebroadcast (bounce) the signals back to earth.
Kinda like the Enterprise losing the warp drive, but still having impulse power to putter around.
These birds cost US$200-300 million to build and US$100-150 million to launch. Failure of this type is a huge loss for Intelsat and a costly transition for the broadcasters.
The companies that used that bird need to switch to other ones. This causes two problems.
1) Antennas - The recievers all need to repoint their antennas at new birds. This is a pain in the ass to do precisely.
2) Bumps - Due to agreements, some companies on Telstar 4 have the right to 'bump' others off the backup birds and take their places. If you get bumped, you are fuxxored.
Make some sense now?
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Gah, I read this one 5 times and still didnt understand. After reading all the links and doing some googling here it is again in a lower form of techno-geek (or would it be higher? not sure).
T4 is a broadcast Satalite used to transmit the raw station feeds from the central offices (read networks) to local broadcasters (cable, local ABC affiliate etc).
What Data T4 is responcible for:
Robust broadcast and syndication neighborhood anchored by ABC and CBS; host to SNG, data and distance learning applications. (Also hosted is Spice Channel and two other adult viewing stations which are not mentioned on the main site)
Where it effects:
The central portion of North America
The origional poster mentions the Carrier frequencies that the data is normally transfered on. The poster also mentions that there is no data being broadcast, just the main freq.
I have no way of confirming this myself, and dont see anything about it on any of the satalite pages. All they report is that a satalite is up and running (i.e. the Carrier frequency is present, but nothing on the data being transmitted)
As for the information on replacing the old T4 with T8, well T8 is currently handling south america, and the information I could find on google about the sale of the out dated satalites it vague at best.
Who does this effect:
Possably people out in the midwest are not getting any TV on their cable boxes.
mostlikly its effecting the cable companies and local affiliates who need to reroute to another satalite, and the central offices which also need to switch the feeds to other sat feed providers.
In the end nothing is confirmed.
Telstar 401 out of serviceJanuary 17, 1997: 1:01 p.m. ET Satellite's failure could cost AT&T several hundred million dollars NEW YORK (CNNfn) -- AT&T said on Friday that it has been unsuccessful in its attempts to re-establish contact with Telstar 401 and has declared the satellite permanently out of service. The satellite's telemetry and communications abruptly stopped early Saturday morning, the company said. The satellite, which began malfunctioning last weekend, was used to transmit network TV programs. The problem has been invisible to TV viewers because AT&T said it immediately restored service for customers whose contracts called for transfer of their transponder service to Telstar 402R, and restored other services as well. In addition to traffic from ABC and other networks, the satellite carried signals from syndicators, resellers and educational networks. An AT&T spokesman said this is the first time AT&T has ever seen a satellite broadcast successfully and then fail completely. On September 25, 1996, AT&T agreed to sell AT&T Skynet Satellite Services to Loral Space & Communications. Skynet consisted of three satellites, one of them more than ten years old. The loss of Telstar 401 significantly reduces the value of Skynet and could cost AT&T several hundred million dollars. Telstar was launched in late 1993 and started serving customers early in 1994. It is highly unusual for a satellite to fail so quickly. The satellite was manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Find this article at: http://money.cnn.com/1997/01/17/technology/att
I called Skynet, and this was their quote:
"Telstar 4 experienced a short circuit of primary its power bus and is not fixable. This satellite is offline permanently."
I used to work for an npr station doing operations stuff, mostly catching shows off network and recording them for rebroadcast and I remember the time that their satellite had problems. actually i don't remember it, that whole time period was this haze of me not sleeping and freaking out about how we were going to get our programing and people calling in to scream at us so it was all sort of a blur. npr switched over to useing some sattelite that canadian broadcasting had space on, since we had helped them out in the past when things went wrong with their network they didn't charge us an arm and a leg. the tv networks that had to switch over had to cough up the real money though.
is that Muzak uses it to broadcast. The elevators have gone quite...
A link to an article might have been nice.
I found a short article that outlines some basic details of what they (Loral) know now and what they're doing to alleviate any problems to the end-user (you).
><));>
That's the same thing my girlfriend says...
Well, maybe a bit.
The 'Telstar' the parent refers to is the 1962 pop instrumental piece written by by Joe Meek and performed by the Tornadoes who became the first U.K. band to have a #1 hit in the States, even before the Beatles. 'Telstar' was inspired by the launch of Telstar 1.
Of course, this is way, way before 99.9% of the Slashdot readership were born so I'm not suprised it was missed. Hell, even I was only 1 year old.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I ordered the Jenna Jameson day long movie marathon on PPV this morning and had my PVR and my bottle of lotion at the ready... I am SO screwed.... and not in the good way either...! ;)
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
I was in the sun looking for T4 for about an hour today before I gave up and called in to find out what happened...(I work for Muzak)
Now I get to work all day tomorrow switching dishes to a different bird. Time to break out the aloe-vera and sunscreen.. its going to be a long week.
So what should we assume about the "PBS X" channel, considering all the other pr0n related channels carried.....
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
From a 'technology' standpoint, the loss of T4 is a big deal. More nattering about RIAA, well, does anybody even really care ?
This hasn't improved the programming any. Better luck next time? Amy
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT= 104&STORY=/www/story/09-19-2003/0002020695&EDA TE=
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Loral Skynet, a subsidiary of
NEW YORK, Sept. 19
Loral Space & Communications (OTC Bulletin Board: LRLSQ), today said that its
Telstar 4 satellite experienced a short circuit of its primary power bus today
at 8:56 am EDT, causing the satellite to cease operations. Loral Skynet
immediately made capacity available to most Telstar 4 customers, many of whom
have already had their services restored on Loral's Telstar 5 and Telstar 6
satellites.
Loral Skynet and Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the satellite, are
working to determine the cause of the problem and to restore service on the
satellite, if possible. The satellite is insured for $141 million.
Telstar 8, currently under construction at Space Systems/Loral, will
replace Telstar 4, as planned, at 89 degrees West in mid-2004.
Telstar 4 coverage includes the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto
Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and southern Canada. Telstar 4 was launched in
September 1995.
(Where I work, T4 is backup for CBS, and has several data channels for our Weather Graphics System - that required a retune to T5. BTW, there is *always* a "backup/replacement" satellite in the pipeline to replace existing satellites)
I think that's the first time we've Slashdotted a satellite.