Summary
The UK’s oldest satellite, Skynet-1A, launched in 1969, has mysteriously shifted from its original orbit over Africa to a high-risk position over the Americas.
It’s suspected that in the 1970s, Skynet-1A was intentionally moved west, possibly by U.S. controllers, but records confirming who made this decision and why are missing.
Now inactive, the satellite poses collision risks to active satellites, as it occupies a congested orbit at 105 degrees West longitude.
The UK may eventually need to consider relocating Skynet-1A or removing it altogether to mitigate risks from space debris.
aliens
They shouldn’t worry so much about why the original satellite is in a new orbit. They should worry about the indistinguishable replica which took its place.
BECAUSE IT WAS BLOCKING MY FUCKING VIEW!
Christ, I warned them and warned them.
And now it’s blocking MY view. I’m moving it back! How the hell am I suppose to look at naked men from space with that dinosaur in my way? FFS!
Naked men from space? So like hot aliens or…?
No, sorry. Naked Earth men viewed from space satellites.
Boring.
Sorry. I find it very interesting. And your damn satellite is STILL IN MY WAY!!! You have until Tuesday or I blow it up!! That’s when Jorio uses his outside shower, and he has been working out. Damnnnnn!
Shit! I forgot my iPod in the engine bay. Could I have until next week? My spaceship is at the North Pole chasing ruzzians. It’s a mission, what can I say. I’ll be up there Saturday and I’ll get my iPod and get out of your way. I can give the old rust can a kick for good measure. Or heck, I could fill it with random pyrotechnics so we can all enjoy. Like having a view of war but in space… from the ground.
Oh I do hope there are tentacles involved!
In my case, there are always tentacles involved.
It’s you non-cephalopods that have the weird sex.
NSFO porn
And yeah, I do have a big hectocotylus. Thanks for asking.
Hey, I’m the CEO CTO of a Brand New Startup named Crayonz. I can launch a rocket filled with crayons and six highly trained
monkeyAI models to mask the satellite.I just need 1.6 billion BTC for Funding A, but we can make this work! Think of the AI benefits and Space Synergy.
BTC? or BTU’s? It takes a lot of energy to launch. Actually, wouldn’t all the crayonz melt on the way out? This could end up being a very expensive monkey candle, in space.
This could end up being a very expensive monkey candle, in space.
But imagine the friends we’ll make along the way
Deploy the space Rooba!
Marvin, is that you?
Never underestimate how far amateur radio telescope operators will go for a clean sky.
Amateur radio astronomy is really cool. I was into optical telescopes for a long time, I used to have a really nice 8" Newtonian. But the radio telescope stuff is so complicated. The people doing it just for fun are so smart. I have a lot of respect for them.
It’s a wee bit out of my bailiwick, sad to say. Their “hobby smarts” are my “oh my god this is the most concentration I’ve ever had to use to figure something out smarts” although regular astronomy is a hobby I can never get enough of
All I’ve got for now is a tiny 4in newtonian , and though I do want to upgrade, it’s on the back burner for a few years while all my other expenses are sorted.
Still orders of magnitude better than the refractor I used to have.
I thought we had a good idea what was where in orbit. How is this a sudden surprise? I had first read it thinking that it had drifted recently for some reason, but it’s been in that place for 50 years. I get that as more satellites go up things become more risky, but this should have been a known problem a long time ago.
The way I read it is that it’s old news, but who did it still isn’t publicized. I’m sure some people know who did it, just not the public.
Given that it was done in the 70s, probably by people who were at least in their 40s at the time, it’s very possible that they’re all dead by now.
We need to avoid what I call super-spreader events.
Or what everyone else calls the Kessler syndrome.
It’s not Kessler Syndrome until it’s so bad that we can’t feasibly launch anything new. A single cascading collision chain might calm down again after breaking a lot of stuff without any catastrophic long term impact if all the debris ends up either in a stable orbit that can be predicted and avoided by other objects, or unstable orbits that decay until the debris falls out of orbit.
wait, 55 years old satellite still has fuel for thrusters?
If I know correctly, some satellites have ionic propellers, needing just electricity to function.
from the sound of it, no, the article suggests that someone probably commanded them to fire back in the 70s while the thing still worked, and its just unclear when exactly this was and who did it.
And it took 50 years to notice?
No, it would have been detected by various systems pretty much immediately. Those systems are military though, and probably wouldn’t tell the general public about the movement of military satellites
It’s also conceivable that it was detected in that orbit but not recognised, so it was treated as a mystery object
Ooh, a text fragment in the wild. Does not seem to work in Firefox mobile. Did you make it by hand or with some extension?
Huh odd. Works for me. It’s indeed an odd link
How did you make it?
Honestly this was my first thought.
“sounds like the DOD wanted to test if anyone would notice they moved something with the X37”
