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

Conspiracy!

[mOoZik]

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!

Who are Intelsat?

[barcodez]

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

Sunspot

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this possibly be related to the huge coronal mass ejection i read about Jan 15 sorry no story link but it found a picture
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2005/16jan05/mid i140.gif

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:Conspiracy Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only think of ONE group that has both the motive and means to cut off our communications and that is

Perhaps they should have used AMDsat

[Tony Hoyle]

Or even Cyrixsat... altough that would have probably overheated long before now :)

Poll options

[eclectro]

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

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.

Re:Conspiracy Theory

[maxwell demon]

I can only think of ONE group that has both the motive and means to cut off our communications and that is

Since you don't tell what goup it is, I'll have to guess. The fact that you post as AC and finally decided not to post it anyway strongly suggests you actually meant

THE SLASHDOT CROWD

Yes, that makes sense. After all, the slashdot crowd is well known of killing web servers (the so-called slashdot effect). They use a site tarned as "news for nerds, stuff that matters" to efficiently communicate the targeted servers for the DDoS attacks. It's only a logical next step from killing websites to killing satellites. Therefore everyone on slashdot is suspect. Oh, wait ...

Where to look

[dave-tx]

Just keep an eye out on ebay - like all "missing" merchandise, it'll show up eventually. Shipping charges will be a bitch, though.

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:Why link to wikipedia??

[squiggleslash]

I can't speak for either of those two examples, but I can't be the only person who has stumbled across a website for some organization, spent ten minutes browsing it, and still been totally confused as to what it is they actually do.

Wikipedia can be nice because it gets to the point.

Not an Explanation

[maggard]

It's reasonably likely that Metal Whiskers can.

No, it's not likely, reasonably or otherwise.

"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! "