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Intelsat Loses Another Satellite

Posted by timothy on from the space-is-a-harsh-realm dept.

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."

5 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Technical info by JS_RIDDLER · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    --
    _JS
  2. Who are Intelsat? by barcodez · · Score: 4, Informative

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

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  3. Re:Lost due solar storm?! by Rob+Carr · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

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    This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
  4. Re:Sunspot by digitalchinky · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Evil Accountants? by digitalchinky · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.