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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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. I red the summary this time.
Rouge satellites?
Are the slashdot editors drunk? This is only the latest of several simple grammatical and spelling errors in the summaries today.
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!
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.
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.
The X-37B operates in low earth orbit about 200 miles up. The satellite is in Geosynchronous orbit at about 22,000 miles up. How do you get the X-37B to where the satellite is?
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
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.
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!
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.