What the heck?
Actually Skynet
Scientists are baffled after the UK’s oldest satellite, Skynet-1A, which was launched in 1969, appears to have moved to an entirely different position in its geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface — and nobody knows who did it or why.
As the BBC reports, the communications relay for the British forces mysteriously wandered west, from above Africa’s east coast to over the Americas, even though gravitational shifts should’ve moved it further east.
According to the report, orbital mechanics simply can’t account for its drifting, which only leaves one obvious possibility open: somebody moved Skynet-1A.
Worse yet, its new position could be hazardous for many other geostationary satellites circling the Earth.
“It’s now in what we call a ‘gravity well’ at 105 degrees West longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl,” space consultant Stuart Eves told the BBC. “And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis.”
“Because it’s dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it’s ‘our’ satellite we’re still responsible for it,” he added.
Lost in Orbit
Despite his best efforts, Eves has yet to figure out why the UK’s oldest spacecraft mysteriously wandered thousands of miles west.
While it helped British forces to communicate with other bases across the entire globe, Skynet-1A was built by and launched in the United States.
“The Americans originally controlled the satellite in orbit,” Graham Davison, who directed the satellite at the operations center at Royal Air Force Oakhanger in the UK, told the BBC. “They tested all of our software against theirs, before then eventually handing over control to the RAF.”
Davison couldn’t recall when or if control was handed back to the US.
Documents suggest the US was in control when Oakhanger lost sight of the ancient satellite in June 1977. However, instead of being retired in our planet’s “orbital graveyard,” where most geostationary satellites go to spend the rest of their days as space junk, Skynet-1A shifted to a far more unfortunate location.
Our planet’s orbit has become incredibly cluttered, particularly at the spacecraft’s current longitude. An active satellite, according to the BBC, may come close to space junk up to four times a day.
Just last month, a Boeing satellite suddenly exploded into about 500 trackable pieces of debris in geostationary orbit.
Fortunately, numerous companies are working on a potential solution: specially designed spacecraft that can pluck defunct satellites out of the sky and move them out of harm’s way.
And the clock is ticking. Scientists have long warned of a situation called “Kessler syndrome,” in which one space junk collision could lead to a cascading series of events that make an already dangerous space junk problem into an orbital crisis.
More on space junk: Boeing Satellite Exploded Into at Least 500 Pieces of Debris
