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Rogue Satellite Shuts Down US Weather Services
radioweather writes "On Sunday, the drifting rogue 'zombie' Galaxy 15 satellite with a stuck transmitter interfered with the satellite data distribution system used by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), effectively shutting down data sharing between NWS offices nationwide, as well as weather support groups for the US Air force. This left many forecasters without data, imagery, and maps. Interference from Galaxy 15 affected transmissions of the SES-1 Satellite, which not only serves NOAA with data relay services, but also is used to feed TV programming into virtually every cable network in the US. NOAA's Network Control Facility reports that the computer system affected was NOAA's Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) used to issue forecasts and weather bulletins which uses the weather data feed. They also state the problem is likely to recur again this month before the satellite drifts out of range and eventually dies due to battery depletion."
Goddamn Commies finally attacked! To your bunkers, citizens!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
They're putting makeup on satellites now?
Bet their faces are red about this one.
[Soviet Russia joke goes here.]
That's an intentional misspelling of the word for humourous effect, right? Right? Unbelievable!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
lol, worse every day.
Just wait until next week when a mascara satellite knocks out the GPS network!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Rogue, not rouge. It's not wearing makeup.
Daniel Crawford
Hasn't anyone called Technora yet? Space Debris Section should have been tasked to retrieve Galaxy 15 long ago.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
who ghost wrote Sarah Palin's book "Going Rouge"
Doesn't anybody want to comment about the rogue satellite?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Let the record show that the first eight comments were entirely devoted to pointing out a common typo in the headline, and that every response to those comments so far has been directly related to said typo. Let it not be said that Slashdot cares not for the Queen's English.
Space Sharks! With fricking Space Lasers!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Knowing the machinations behind the NFL on FOX broadcasts (double redundancy -everywhere-) I was surprised when the game dropped out and returned in 4:3 SD on Sunday, now I know they must've lost their uplink.
If the world isn't beating a path to your door you're doing something wrong.
Orbiting space trash is here to stay.
There will no money in collecting 10,000 MPH space trash until someone it sued because they didn't clean it up. Humans (or Ferengi) do nothing unless there is profit.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
No more satellite images? No more data and imagery??
Back to tea leaves then.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Rouge satellites?
Are the slashdot editors drunk? This is only the latest of several simple grammatical and spelling errors in the summaries today.
I am sure the US public will get by without weather reports but affecting tv programming? does this mean NO TV?! I predict a riot. Maybe even a revolution. This could bring down the USA!
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment.
In Soviet Russia, Weather interferes with you!
Rogue, or a test of satellite jamming capabilities? No amount of software/hardware security will help if you just have to float a satellite with a 'stuck transmitter' on over.
This is a "runaway" wearing rouge? A zombie runaway too? So a zombified runaway is going down the orbital highway wearing too much makeup, or is the headline incorrect?
I am so confused!
Kids these days!!
Are they slowly lumbering into different orbits and gnawing on the CPUs of any live satellites they can find?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
didn't see that one coming.
I see my grandma made it to them too, with the pinching of the cheeks and all...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Nuke it out of orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
The possible Galaxy 15 interference isn't expected until 12/12 to 12/18. In anticipation of the interference, the contractor that maintains the SES-1 satellite for the National Weather Service adjusted the signal's power levels early Friday, resulting in data slow downs and sporadic missed messages. After resolving the power level problems Saturday, signal problems reappeared on Sunday. It was determined that interference from another instrument on the same satellite was causing the signal degradation. The signal was switched to an alternate frequency (which is when the author stopped receiving data). The source of the interference was found and fixed by mid-day Monday. Current National Weather Service admin messages can be found here: http://weather.noaa.gov/tgstatus/
I was beginning to wonder why it hasn't snowed here yet despite that there seems to be ample moisture and below freezing temperatures. I guess this explains it.
Perhaps the USAF should use their spiffy new drone shuttle to capture/destroy/repair this poor little misguided satellite . Seems like a good demonstration case to me.
Sorry, I'm late to this slashdot article and all the good jokes about the misspelling in the article's title have already been done.
---------
T.Dzubin
Those Energizers keep going, and going, and going, and going, and going....
Interesting. The data download on my ancient DirecTivo stopped yesterday or Sunday. It reports one receiver getting 89% and the other 0%. I figured it was the Tivo going bad (it's been rebooting itself a lot lately), but maybe it's the satellite.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
why can't cable use fiber to feed the head ends?
We start with the uplink properly paying attention to it's mate in orbit and all is well. Then this painted strumpet comes sauntering by and the uplink's attention wanders. This is naturally followed by the slap to the cheek. It takes a few minutes to re-align after that.
Intelsat is powerless to do anything about this cosmic red light district.
That is a heck of a weak link in the chain. No redundancy? I had better go RTFA soI know if the weather channel will survive this datapocolipse.
I do not play in the middle of the road
it's ROGUE dammit! Rouge is makeup
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
If people want to casually post loose, rouge, etc. I'm willing to let it slide.
But having it in a headline just makes slashdot look pathetic.
Are there no editors, are they illiterate, or do they just not care?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They could use this wonderful network of tubes that we can shove bits through called the Internet. There's plenty of bandwidth to stream high-def TV, weather images, etc; in fact, it's done every day. The satellite network no doubt serves as an important link, but you would think that fiber optics work in a pinch. (note that this is not a weather data gathering satellite, just a weather relay)
ERROR: Null
Why do I care about the color of the satell... oh, you meant "rogue". Kinda hilarious typo.
Time to have the US Air Force shoot this bastard down... They have the weapon for this (ASAT missile, fired from an F-15). How much more trouble will they allow this bastard to cause ?
This is personally amusing to me because I spent half of Sunday trying to track down reports of my Android Live Wallpaper app not working properly. I guess in hindsight, it's pretty cool. I mean, it's not often that you get to lament that a rogue satellite ruined your afternoon.
Oh, and in case you were wondering why I didn't take the opportunity to shamlessly plug my app.
http://www.appidio.com/apps/radar-wallpaper/
It's a live wallpaper for Android phones that shows the nearest NWS radar imagery.
The outage over the weekend was NOT caused by Galaxy 15. Galaxy 15 is expected to pass by SES-1 on December 15.
I'm angry, and I Meta Moderate!
Most of the orbiting debris's owners are known. Couldn't we start de-orbiting this junk and charge the owners for the service? A reasonable Earth based solution would be to use lasers to push a satellite up, just a bit at apogee, without adding angular velocity. This should bring the perigee down closer to Earth. In time object would drag on the atmosphere and burn out.
Not having data feeds from millions of dollars of satellite equipment available, weather forecasters have instead been using a bag of d20s to make their predictions and oddly, forecast reliability has improved 12%!
Pathetic? Better be careful. Next thing you know, you'll say it's stagnated and start getting modded troll!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
I work at a weather company and this problem turned into some hurried phone calls to staff over the weekend. I'm on the data team, but I was only peripherally involved. This outage was expected, but not expected for another six days, so we were prepared with code changes for when the problem arose, but we hadn't turned on those changes yet because we thought it would be another week almost.
And I'm going to wrap up my post now, because I don't actually have anything interesting to say about it.
that the problem is the erratic orbital nature of Galaxy 15, and the fact that this orbit intersects weather Satellites. Would it be proper to refer to this relationship as.... NOAA's....Arc? Two by two.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
a rouge satellite? really?
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
Quick - someone call Max Factor!!
I shall sneak up on this satellite with my trusty level 85 worgen rouge and kill it with my blad of deth.
It shall be an ex-satellite.
It shall be a pine tree in the Fords.
It shall have gone to join the Queue Indivisible.
And all that this rouge satellite shall have to say will be one thing:
"I'm feeling better. It's just a Fleischer wound!"
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's no good, I can't moderate!
What part of `yes no` don't you understand?
Are there no editors, are they illiterate, or do they just not care?
yes
What does this have to do with Sarah Palin?
Next thing you know, you'll say it's stagnated
Nah. It's gone WAY past that. I think /. jumped the shark when they started posting article stuffs on Facebook... Why bother with the site itself anymore?
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
Someone edited the title to correct it and neglected to make a note of the correction with the article. Nice.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
kill -9 galaxy15
Either your title was a joke or you're a fucking moron. I'm gonna go with the latter.
Look, if they didn't make an innocent misteak like this every now and then,
we wouldn't have anything to complain/post about.
And, yes, I'll take my misteak medium-rare with Bearnaise Sauce, thank you, Gordon.
Just don't forget the risotto appetizer first, OK?
It should be:
:P
from the ambush-eviscerate-vanish dept.
"Nerds" my ass.
Those TV stations used to hire these people called "meteorologists" who could get a local forecast right greater than 80% of the time by looking outside the window and knowing what time of the year it was. Now they hire hookers and tell them to read NOAA text.
+++OK ATH
Naaa Naaa,
Industrial Military War Complex my ass - shoot the fucking thing down ya bunch of pussies!
What ya going to do when another asshole group of hackers takes over a "Satellite"!
US Cyber security my ass!