Intelsat Loses Another Satellite

Alarash writes "Intelsat reported a few days ago that its IS-804 Satellite is lost in space. According to the press release, the '[...] satellite experienced a sudden and unexpected electrical power system anomaly on January 14, 2005, at approximately 5:32 p.m. EST that caused the total loss of the spacecraft.' The satellite was in charge of the South Pacific's media delivery. As a reminder, Intelsat-7, another satellite from Intelsat, got lost a couple of months ago."

Comments

Technical info

[JS_RIDDLER]

All links are from their site. Here is a image of the coverage area of the satellite:

http://www.intelsat.com/resources/coveragemaps/sat _foot.aspx?name=804&loc=174&spot=global
Here is some technical data on the satellite:
http://www.intelsat.com/resources/coveragemaps/sat _foot_details.aspx?name=804&loc=174

Also here is some Satellite Basics :
http://www.intelsat.com/resources/satellitebasics. aspx

Who are Intelsat?

[barcodez]

Well I didn't know so for others here is a summary of Intelsat

Re:Lost due solar storm?!

[Rob Carr]

Satellite lost on January 14th, 5:32 EST, which is 12:32 UTC. The CMEs and radio blackouts you report were 7:10 UTC January 15th.

There don't appear to have been any warnings on the 14th. It's unlikely it was fried by a solar flare.

Explanation

[jaavaaguru]

It's reasonably likely that Metal Whiskers can caused this. Nasa also has more information about this pehnomenon. Both links I've provided have nice pics.

Re:Sunspot

[digitalchinky]

The problem with sunspot activity and satellites is that there are a few 'thousand' functional satellites orbiting (or geostationary) at any given moment. If it's a numbers game, then the tin foil hat croud will need to re-think, since there is no consipracy. It just broke. A random failure in a sea of success. These things are shielded up pretty good. I've worked this trade for a long time (Military/Civil), I've not heard of many failures put down to the sun.

Sure there are numerous little problems - failed transponders and such - but these things fly with backups of most things.

You can download small programs that plot the locations of most known birds - real time 3d graphics, based on ephemeris.

Of course, SBRS and ADSCS will be mildly inconvenienced at having to 'work' for a few days - heh. It's their area of operations.

Re:Evil Accountants?

[digitalchinky]

I used to survey satellite downlinks in my previous life - the majority of satellites had large chunks of unused bandwidth - in some cases a few newly launched sats had their entire C and K band 'empty' - mostly Japanese owned birds.

Intelsat has always been well loaded, they even palm off satellites in decayed orbits to various asian countries (deemed to be end of lifed) - probably just to eek out as much money as possible. I doubt intelsat will be happy about this. There is huge competition in the industry, it's no tax write off.

Re:Possible Reasons for satellite loss

[NardofDoom]

Let me be the first of many to point out that terrestrial bats don't have radar, just so nobody is confused. They have sonar, like dolphins, only in the air and while flying. It would be like you running through the forest at night screaming at the top of your lungs and listening for the echo to keep from running into trees.

Space bats, however, would have to have radar or lidar because sound cannot travel in space.