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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."
All links are from their site. Here is a image of the coverage area of the satellite:
t _foot.aspx?name=804&loc=174&spot=global t _foot_details.aspx?name=804&loc=174
:. aspx
http://www.intelsat.com/resources/coveragemaps/sa
Here is some technical data on the satellite:
http://www.intelsat.com/resources/coveragemaps/sa
Also here is some Satellite Basics
http://www.intelsat.com/resources/satellitebasics
_JS
This seems too consistent to be a random failure. Wasn't there some sort of a mystery as to what caused the last one? I propose that the satellites are slowly being hijacked and will soon be used against us, a la Independence Day! They'll collectively broadcast crappy reality shows to every corner of the world and none of us would be able to stop them! AHH! AHHHH!
A blog like any other.
Welcome our new satellite-eating overlords.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
maybe someone doesn't want communications to happen. i think a powerful enough radio beam could fry the satellite. ideas?
could this be a test bed for the newest extortion?? "give us the money or your satellite gets it"
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Well I didn't know so for others here is a summary of Intelsat
----
Could this possibly be related to the huge coronal mass ejection i read about Jan 15 sorry no story link but it found a pictured i140.gif
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2005/16jan05/mi
Could it be that Intelsat-7 found something interesting while being AWOL and called his friend to come and see it, too ?
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
Damn it, I told you not to post a link to one of the satellites on /. again! Do you hear me?!
... but still space-related:
;-)
New Titan panorama from Huygens! Complete with a worryingly Earth-like 'coastline' - I don't think anyone's decided if the dark areas actually contain any liquid or not, but still utterly intriguing.
Oh, and now back to our scheduled broadcast. Satellite losses, not good. Big investment and all that, and long lead-time to launching replacements. Whatever!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
*puts on tin foil hat* /.er living in the hills with a tin foil hat on*
I'm safe, right?
RIGHT?!
Run for the hills! AAHH!
*becomes another insane
Is it because of increased Solar activity? Can the real cause be ever discovered? If it's because of the Sun, can we have protective magnetic fields (akin to Earth's own) generated around our space vehicles in emergency? Like - if we ever go to Mars won't it be better to have active shielding instead of thick lead plating? (I know nothing)
Or even Cyrixsat... altough that would have probably overheated long before now :)
I'd bet on 1 or 2, 3 is an outside possibility, and 4 the result of eating cold pizza for breakfast. It's worth noting that (as near as I can tell from SpaceWeather.com, there were no solar flares when the second satellite was lost. So if the satellite was lost to a design flaw, at least it's not due to poor protection from solar flares.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
1) Solar Flux
2) Those darn Russians
3) Sensor installed upside down
4) Kids with laser pointers
5) Meteorite
6) Tax purposes
7) Unfriendly UFO
8) Overheating
9) Autodestruct after two-weeks of reruns
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Do I have to do everything around here?
Just a moment while I get my old PowerBook so I can upload the virus to the alien ship.
Bastards keep trying to take them over so they can communicate around the Earth (they traveled like 6 million light-years to get here and they didn't know the Earth was round?).
Does this affect my broadband connection? Noooo. I don't even know why I bother...
There don't appear to have been any warnings on the 14th. It's unlikely it was fried by a solar flare.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Hmmm, curious. I'm assuming that this is NOT the same as the Japanese JCSAT-1B, operated by JSAT (a Japanese company). It has gone "out" as of today. Latest news is that a thruster broke down and it changed directions a bit. All communication channels are currently out cold. FYI, JCSAT-1B was built by Boeing. 3 satellites going out in just a couple months? Makes you think, no?
It's those damn SPECTRE chappies again!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
For those of us who moved out of our parent's basement, it's a far too-well known phenomenon.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
"To lose one satellite may be regarded as a misfortune... to lose both seems like carelessness".
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.
Follow me
So let me get this straight. Their satellite fries and they just transfer everyone over to unused bandwidth on their other satellites. Then they declare a $73 million dollar loss on their taxes. Does this fall into fiscal 2004 or 2005?
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
Danger, Danger IS-804!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
The Sun puts out 1368 W/m^2 at Earth's orbit, so I don't think your hypothetical laser would even be noticed.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Well, there could be another reason... Quoth the same article:
"Under the terms of the Transaction Agreement and Plan of Amalgamation for the sale of Intelsat dated August 16, 2004, among Intelsat, Ltd., Intelsat (Bermuda), Ltd., Zeus Holdings Limited (Zeus Holdings), Zeus Merger One Limited and Zeus Merger Two Limited, the total loss of the IS-804 satellite gives Zeus Holdings the right to not consummate the acquisition of Intelsat. Zeus Holdings has advised Intelsat that it is evaluating the impact of the IS-804 failure."
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
I'm honestly curious: why would you link to wikipedia instead of to Intelsat itself?
This came up in a discussion last week: someone had linked to a wikipedia entry for Tripwire (the company) instead of linking to Tripwire.com. Wouldn't it make more sense to get information directly from the source (and form one's own opinion) instead of reading the material at Wikipedia (which is essentially someone else's opinion)?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Sorry, but if you divide a power by the square of a length, then you don't get a power, but power per area (also known as energy flux).
Your calculation would be right if
a) the laser had an opening angle of 45 degrees (so radius of covered area equals distance of light),
b) the satellite had a cross section of exactly 1 square meter and
c) there would be vacuum between you and the satellite.
Now b is not impossible, but a would imply a rather badly focused beam. OTOH c would imply reduced power.
According to this article, a laser gives a spot with a diameter of 7km on the moon (distance 3.6*10^8 m), so at the point of the satellite it would be 7000/3.6e8 * 3.5e7 m = ca. 680 m, which assuming a circular spot gives an area of 3.6e5 m^2.
If there were no atmosphere, for your 250 kW laser pulse, this would amount to an energy flux of about 0.69 W/m^2. Orders of magnitude above your value, but still too low to do any harm (for comparison, the total energy flux of an 80W light bulb [light and heat together, i.e. taking the complete 80W into account] is about 6.4 W/m^2. That is, a 2.5 megawatt laser would generate the same energy flux at the satellite as a 80W lightbulb would.
Now, what will the satellite have to cope with anyway? Well, obviously the sun. Now, the energy flux of the sun above atmosphere is 1370W/m^2. That is, even the 2.5 megawatt laser would just add 0.5% to the energy flux the sun throws at the satellite anyway.
That's of course without taking into account the atmosphere.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Correct my physics!
Ok, I'll give it a go. Lasers are not point sources - the formula you used is for an isotropic radiator, not a beam source. You'd need to know the divergence of the laser to calculate the power/m2 at the satellite. Also, your peak pulse power is off by about a factor of 10-20 (or more...)
Say the beam half-angle divergence of your 250 kW laser is 1 milliradian (mrad) (pretty crappy). At 35,000 km, the beam will be at least 35*tan(0.001)*2 = 70 km wide. That's only 65 uW/m2. Not even bright, much less cripplin'.
Increase the intensity of the beam to 5 MW and reduce the divergence to .25 mrad, and you get a beam 8750*2 = 17.5 km across and a power density of only 20 mW/m2. That's less than a class II supermarket scanner laser.
Damaging a geostationary sat is hard with a laser!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
...You Only Live Twice. remember, that huge space cucumber eating US and CCCP space ships? That's what it was!
Others have suggested that some of these "lost" satellites are merely being delivered to the CIA, NSA, DIA or other covert agency (perhaps not American). Especially if they're backups, silent until needed in a crisis, they'd be probably impossible to easily detect as working. And it's much more expensive for antisatellite weapons to target every "dead" satellite in orbit on the chance that a few are just playing dead for a new master.
--
make install -not war
I am attaching an article from the Wall Street Journal describing how although this is the first major failure of an Intelsat satellite, the other two major satellite manufacturers in the US have "seen their reputations tarnished by a spate of commercial-spacecraft malfunctions." Given that these are multimillion dollar products and are incredibly critical to the world these days, it is surprising to me that there would be such significant quality control problems. /. I would have thought the slashdot crowd would have been all over this. Anyhow, here's the article:
Also, I'm surprised that I don't see more technical discussion of this issue on
Lockheed Faces Quality Concerns
After Failure of Intelsat Satellite
By ANDY PASZTOR
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 18, 2005; Page A6
The sudden loss of a satellite operated by Intelsat Ltd. raises reliability concerns about spacecraft manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp., which until now managed to avoid the negative publicity over failures that has bedeviled its leading U.S. rivals.
The abrupt shutdown last weekend of Intelsat 804, an eight-year-old Lockheed Martin-built satellite serving the South Pacific, also is likely to prompt greater industrywide efforts to enhance outside insurance coverage or set aside larger in-house reserves to cope with significant malfunctions in orbit.
With the commercial satellite-services industry transitioning to control by various private-equity groups, the financial implications of technical problems are coming under increased scrutiny. "Potential failures clearly are going to be highlighted in the minds" of the new breed of investors, according to Armand Musey, a former Wall Street analyst who helps run Near Earth LLC, a boutique investment bank specializing in space.
Buying additional insurance -- or revising self-insurance plans to minimize the impact of further catastrophic equipment malfunctions -- are bound to be "at the top of the list of fixes," Mr. Musey said.
During the 1990s, U.S. commercial and military space projects costing more than $11 billion either failed to reach appropriate orbits because of rocket failures or didn't operate properly once they got to the correct orbit. More recently, Boeing Co. and Loral Space & Communications Ltd., the other big U.S. satellite makers, have seen their reputations tarnished by a spate of commercial-spacecraft malfunctions.
The causes of those problems range from improperly assembled solar arrays to electrical-power glitches to substandard propulsion systems installed on commercial-communications satellites, some of which carry price tags as high as $150 million. Launch and insurance costs can boost the final price to $250 million or more.
For Intelsat, the No. 2 global commercial-satellite operator, it is the second time since mid-December that a major satellite problem has held up its pending $3 billion takeover by a group of private-equity firms. Instead of anticipating final approval of the transaction this month, Intelsat executives now are being forced back to the negotiating table to hammer out new terms, according to company and industry officials.
Intelsat, which is incorporated in Bermuda but has its headquarters in Washington, is expected to need months to negotiate a revised agreement and then submit the terms for shareholder approval. If the negotiations turn contentious, some industry officials say that could prompt rival bidders to place their own offers.
The satellite that went dead wasn't insured, and Intelsat said it is working with its own fleet and other operators to restore service to customers. Many small Pacific islands relied on the Intelsat satellite for phone and data services. Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Md., has said only that it is working with Intelsat to determine the cause of the shutdown. Most satellites are manufactured to last for about 15 years.
For the broader satellite industry, the latest malfunctio
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
From the article: "...the total loss of the IS-804 satellite gives Zeus Holdings the right to not consummate the acquisition of Intelsat. Zeus Holdings has advised Intelsat that it is evaluating the impact of the IS-804 failure."
Could it be this is their way of getting out of the acquisition of Intelsat by Zeus Holdings? Two satellite failures in about 3 months time is a pretty high failure rate.
Or, I wonder if it could be the tin whiskers reported earlier causing unexpected power failures.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
They're just trying to prove that the private sector can do what NASA does for less money. This was just proof-of-concept. For the full demo they'll slam another one into a planet.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
"Metal whiskers", vacuum deposition, etc. are well recognized issues in satellite construction. After a few thousand birds at many millions a pop the industry is quite savvy about avoiding these.
The impending EU ban on lead in consumer products has no effect on the satellite industry (they're exempt; Li'l Jr. is unlikely to be teething on Intelsat 9008b and most of it's components aren't off-the-shelf but specialized radiation-hardened product runs).
But thank you for reading the previous /. story on this and now trendily applying it to everything trying to sound knowledgable.
"My code won't compile" " Metal whiskers! "
"My candidate lost!" " Metal whiskers! "
"Erectile dysfuntion" (all together now) " Metal whiskers! "
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The "total loss" of a US$73 million ($106.19 million) satellite on Saturday morning left several Pacific Islands and Scott Base in Antarctica without telephone communications to the outside world.
Story here.
No conspiracy, it was terrorists.
The Department of Homeland Security is currently seeking information on two men with "strange accents" who recently purchased a laser pointer from a local Office Depot.
The two men were overheard discussing which laser pointers were the most powerful and could "shoot the farthest." The two also paid cash for the laser pointer, leaving no paper trail.
This follows disturbing recent events in which terrorists on the ground tried to down commercial aircraft by blinding the pilots with similar laser pointers.