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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: 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.