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On the morning of June 17, the Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES lost control of a large satellite in geostationary space, nearly 36,000km above the Earth's surface. Shortly after, the satellite operator began working with another company that specializes in space situational awareness to track the drifting machine, AMC-9. A few days ago that company, ExoAnalytic Solutions, saw the AMC-9 satellite begin to fragment.
"We have seen several pieces come off of it over the past several days," ExoAnalytic's chief executive officer, Doug Hendrix, told Ars. "We are tracking at least one of the pieces. I would hesitate to say we know for sure what happened."
Sunday 11am ET Update: In response to a query from Ars, the AMC-9 satellite's operator, Luxembourg-based SES, issued the following statement on Sunday morning:
In the early hours of 1st July, the SES Satellite Control reestablished contact to AMC-9. SES and the satellite manufacturer Thales are working around the clock to evaluate the status and define the next steps.
Tracking information received on 29 June had suggested that at least two separate objects were located in the vicinity of AMC-9. Their source has still to be determined. The new piece of information was included by Thales and SES in their investigations.
Kessler syndrome?
Source: A satellite may be falling apart in geostationary orbit
SES's AMC-9 satellite drifting after anomaly
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @01:07AM
It can break up any time it likes, but it can never leave orbit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @01:20AM (12 children)
Is the Kessler syndrome possible at geo-synchronus orbit? Everything would seem to have about the same velocity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 03 2017, @01:41AM
Don't trust America for the answers. I was just watching some Youtube vids about airborne sensor failures and they called a Pitot-static* probe a "pilot" probe.
* Static vs. total pressure probe, utilizing a titanium sensing element.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday July 03 2017, @01:48AM (1 child)
Yes. As I understand, geo-synchronous satellites effectively sit in a box. There are four boxes per degree. So, 1440 boxes in total. Any mechanical failure could initiate drift into another box. This includes asteroid strike. It may take weeks for geo-synchronous orbit to become a complete debris field but we have nothing to halt it or reverse it. Indeed, we have very little which can reach it.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 03 2017, @05:47PM
FWIW, when I heard it was coming apart my first thought was "meteorite strike". This could cause changes in velocity (though that should be measurable). OTOH, if it didn't fragment the satellite, then it must have been a really small meteorite, and shouldn't cause *much* change in velocity. And geocentric orbit is a huge place. In addition to which it would be quite unlikely that the delta v would be entirely in the plane of the orbit. So I wouldn't expect much danger to other orbiting satellites...at least not the ones at any distance (say 0.001 of a degree away as viewed from earth center).
OTOH, I haven't done any calculations. If someone wants to bother they may show I'm wildly wrong.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Monday July 03 2017, @01:59AM (8 children)
It doesn't take much velocity to break satellites at GSO. However things indeed move slower up there and there's more space than at low Earth orbit (LEO). So we would see for a given number of objects less spectacular collisions and a longer ramp up to full Kessler syndrome than at LEO. OTOH, debris sticks around a lot longer (I seem to recall several orders of magnitude longer) so debris at GSO would be a problem for much longer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @03:01AM (3 children)
I guess my fear is that we are so damned vulnerable in this spot. One load of pea-gravel in an elliptical polar orbit intersecting this ring and everything is history.
Reminds me of my own country. We have a lot of politicians and war machines, along with impressive arrays of young men in uniforms twirling their guns in unison for display.... yet we have to import technical talent to make our stuff work, while our own aerospace executives are paid bonuses for trimming the work force.
I figure with the technical talent lost to purchase those handshakes, those have got to be among the most expensive handshakes on the planet.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday July 03 2017, @04:34AM (2 children)
And which fine earth-bound country might this be, prey tell?
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday July 03 2017, @09:33AM (1 child)
I wasn't sure from the description, could be North Korea, could be USA.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 03 2017, @12:24PM
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Monday July 03 2017, @07:47AM (3 children)
Slow is a relative term.
The International Space Station travels, on average at about 7 kilometres a second. Its altitude in orbit varies from about 300 to 410 km. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station [wikipedia.org]
A satellite in geostationary orbit has an average speed of about 3 km per second. Orbital altitude is about 35,786 km. http://www.livephysics.com/problems-and-answers/classical-mechanics/find-speed-satellite-geostationary-orbit/ [livephysics.com]
Geostationary satellites are not stationary: they just happen to go round the earth at the same angular velocity as the earth rotates, so from an observer on the earth's surface they remain in the same part of the sky. If they were truly stationary, they wouldn't remain there for long: they would drop, just like a stone, in the absence of anything holding them up (like a continuously firing rocket engine).
A small meteorite could do a lot of damage. And, while the relative speed difference between two geostationary satellites is small, they are not designed to cope with even low speed collisions.
Note that geostationary satellites need to keep their position actively (called station keeping) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping#Station-keeping_in_geostationary_orbit [wikipedia.org] , otherwise, their natural movements would mean that they drift about.
These natural movements, combined with the fact the orbital parameters for geostationary satellites are exacting, mean that an uncontrolled satellite in what was originally a geostationary orbit could be extraordinarily damaging. Most geostationary satellites are designed to be able to boost to a higher 'parking' or 'graveyard' orbit at the end of their useful lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday July 03 2017, @05:45PM (2 children)
That station keeping also includes angular momentum management. What if a small rocket motor stuck in the on position, increasing the satellite's spin rate until pieces started separating? That can be hard to recover from, as rapidly rotating antennas don't receive troubleshooting commands very well, nor transmit needed data reliably.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday July 03 2017, @07:48PM (1 child)
You may be referring to this subtly - in any event, your scenario is similar to what happened to the Japanese Hitomi X-ray astronomy satellite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitomi_(satellite) [wikipedia.org]
https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/18/spinning-japanese-astronomy-satellite-may-be-beyond-saving/ [spaceflightnow.com]
http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/astro_h/files/topics_20160415.pdf [global.jaxa.jp]
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday July 03 2017, @08:32PM
I didn't remember any details, so I used generalized language. That spaceflightnow link is pretty detailed, filling in more details than I saw the first time around.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday July 03 2017, @01:41AM (3 children)
Buy guns, ammo, canned goods, tents, camp stoves, and RUN. RUN I SAY, THEY'RE COMING!!!
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @03:19AM (2 children)
Seriously?
someone modded this 'Offtopic'?
Isn't humour allowed?
Am I overdoing it with the questions?
should I stop, already?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @04:59AM (1 child)
Hopefully, metamoderation blows this guy away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @06:00PM
The first rule of metamoderation is: you do not talk about metamoderation.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 03 2017, @06:16AM
So asteroid or evil missile? Anyway, will this be the end of geostationary orbit?
I recall some figure of 300 years for LEO to self clean. What is the time for geostationary orbit?
First pollution that ends a resource such that it can't be used within our lifetime?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by citizenr on Monday July 03 2017, @06:23AM (3 children)
>"The AMC-9 could have been attacked by something"
Are we sure its a real satellite? and real news?
New Cloverfield franchise film is coming out in October: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Particle_(film) [wikipedia.org]
J. J. Abrams and his company Bad Robot is known for doing this type of guerrilla marketing ( http://cloverfield.wikia.com/wiki/Viral [wikia.com] ), they did it for both original Cloverfield and for 10 Cloverfield Lane. It included fake YT news clips, fake websites for fake satellite/oil/power companies, fake press releases, the whole nine yards.
Fake satellite: http://cloverfield.wikia.com/wiki/ChimpanzIII [wikia.com]
ExoAnalytic Solutions was founded in 2008, the same time Abrams ran his first viral campaign for the Cloverfield.
More about the tangled lore and extent of the viral marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtaCF87_d0c [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday July 03 2017, @08:46AM (1 child)
On the second image in the arstechnica link, you can see star streaks, but a nebula is not streaked. Can someone explain how that would not be a fake image?
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Monday July 03 2017, @11:11AM
Simple explaination: You did not look good enough at the picture.
Clear streaking can be seen in the brighter (middle) parts of the nebula. The rest of the nebula is to dim to give a visible streak and only a few pixels are even noticable above the noise.
(Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Monday July 03 2017, @09:30AM
SES are a major satellite company that have existed for at least 25 years, they provided Astra, which carried Sky One on channel 8 at 19.2E in the days sky was free-to-air (shortly after they started showing DS9). On channel 30 there was a looped program by SES explaining how the Astra fleet worked, it was great.
(Score: 2) by aim on Monday July 03 2017, @12:00PM
SES being the biggest player in the satellite business, I'd find it interesting if they were to finance a de-orbiting attempt on this bird.
There are many concepts, they have the pockets for a full-scale test. They'd stand to win on PR and know-now, maybe other players would be willing to help out for the PR alone (think SpaceX quickly readying a pre-flown Falcon 9 first stage etc.).
Readying a full-scale retrieval device would probably be the most difficult part of such a plan.
Then again, time might be less of an issue, as the drift seems to be rather slow.