9 ms·
Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who
- Luc 2y agoA simple malfunction is not considered in the article. Is that so unlikely, e.g. a sticky relais or some-such?
- cfraenkel 2y agoIt was spin stabilized. A stuck relay would have just created equal thrust all the way around the spin - ie the thrust would cancel out to zero. This design required thrusters that fired for very short intervals at a given delay after the earth sensor saw the earth, so the thrust would line up in the desired vector. In other words, no a simple malfunction cannot result in an orbit change. That said, it's an assumption in the article that the orbit change wasn't due to the cumulative effect of the normal gravitational perturbations the pull on all these vehicles. You'd need to dig up what orbit it was in 40 years ago and then calculate how the orbit would have drifted over those 40 yrs. Good luck.
- IshKebab 2y agoOnly if the thruster is perpendicular to the axis of rotation.
- belter 2y ago[flagged]
- adrian_b 2y agoTLDR: While the title says that it is not known who has moved an abandoned UK satellite used for military telecommunications, the article very strongly implies that it was someone from USA, who does not want to acknowledge this. The satellite had been built by USA and initially operated also by USA, before being handed down to the UK, so they had the capabilities to control it at any time.
- Yeul 2y agoUKs nuclear deterrence is built by the USA. It is a testament to deGaulle's genius that he never fell into that trap.
- dmix 2y agoThe UK not having to build their own SLBM is probably a good thing given the current state of their military procurement. At least from all the bad stories I've heard via the news. Just one less thing they have to worry about so they can focus on other stuff.
- exe34 2y agomaybe the warheads would have fitted on the rockets the first time... (1m10: https://youtu.be/IKQlQlQ6_pk?si=FGnFRJISuTgujgMa https://youtu.be/IKQlQlQ6_pk?si=FGnFRJISuTgujgMa)
- casefields 2y agoI’ll never forget after de Gaulle ordered all American soldiers out of France, US Sec of State Dean Rusk retorted “Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France's cemeteries?"
- cenamus 2y agoTo be honest, most central Europeans would not have been too happy with France's early nuclear strategy. Basically just shooting a-bombs into a corridor along the Rhine to stop the Soviets
- rhplus 2y agoIts current position above Central America would certainly have been useful to the US in the mid 1970s when it apparently moved, perhaps more useful than it would have been to the UK over post-colonial East Africa.
- fy20 2y agoRight, and given the US-UK military relationship, it seems likely that it could have been moved with the UK having full knowledge - but they just didn't want to record or admit it.
- euroderf 2y agoIf satellite warfare will be like chess, this could be a preparatory move.
- rep_lodsb 2y agoThis didn't happen recently. From the article: >Almost certainly, it was commanded to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s to take it westwards.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- perihelions 2y ago- "We need to avoid what I call super-spreader events. When these things explode or something collides with them, it generates thousands of pieces of debris that then become a hazard to something else that we care about." There was one of these just a couple weeks ago (and that was not the first), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904346 ("Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit")
- Iulioh 2y ago....is this really a problem in a geostationary orbit?
- WJW 2y agoYes, because of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
- margalabargala 2y agoNo, because of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit
- schiffern 2y agoActually GEO is one of the worse orbits for this, because 1) unlike LEO, there's so little drag that both large particles and small fragments are essentially up there forever 2) all the satellites are concentrated in a line, not spread out in a 2D plane or (even better) a 3D volume (collisional probability scales as number density squared) 3) despite that, the moon perturbs any uncontrolled debris into a slightly inclined orbit that nevertheless crosses GEO with >500 m/s relative velocity If you want to intentionally rendezvous with and deorbit satellite debris, GEO is certainly one of the orbits to prioritize.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoYes, because the bits that come off satellites don't stay in a perfect orbit with them - inclination and other orbital elements may change, which means they may eventually collide with other satellites.
- retrac 2y agoThere was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). I recently encountered here on HN the suggestion that, the main reason you can't find particularly in-depth details on the Voyager space probes, is project security. Security through obscurity, mostly. If amateurs can detect the signal from the Voyager probes with a small dish antenna, it's at least conceivable someone might hook up a really powerful transmitter, aim it in the probe's direction, and start issuing commands. There's no cryptography, of course. The resources required to hijack like that in the 1970s would have been much greater, and I doubt being hacked was much on the designer's minds. The Apollo Program was the same; today anyone with the documentation, a small dish antenna, a software radio, and some nerd dedication, would be able to hack Apollo midflight via its radio link. It was the equivalent of a root prompt with no password on an exposed port. A bit closer to home, there's a tremendous amount of semi-functional orbital junk with a similar lack of security, decades-old computers still waiting for telecommands.
- garaetjjte 2y agoVoyagers are so far away that possibility of owning necessary antenna is probably limited to nation-states or mad billionaires. Also DSN-sized antenna is not exactly easy to hide. If you are hell-bent on breaking Voyager and have such resources I think you could acquire necessary information anyway (I guess you could get uplink data for reverse-engineer framing format by standing near DSN antenna with SDR?). >would be able to hack Apollo midflight via its radio link. It was the equivalent of a root prompt with no password on an exposed port. Indeed, but in that case it would be port opened with a switch: https://youtu.be/2Jt0PsxLM7k?t=1732 https://youtu.be/2Jt0PsxLM7k?t=1732
- Andrex 2y ago> mad billionaires. If one of them in particular were to happen upon this HN post, I honestly wouldn't put it past him to try messing with Voyager.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> There was remarkably little in the way of security for early satellites (or space probes). Compared to what? What was (or is) worth securing? From what? Talking about security in abstract is nonsensical
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- readyplayernull 2y agoWas the command a wow-signal from a random source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal
- aaron695 2y agoThis is literally a historian can't find paperwork from ~50 years ago. A UK historian can't find in part classified paperwork that would be created by the U.S. Department of Defense who had control and moved a broken satellite in the 1970's Re-framed as a puzzle, why was this location chosen it becomes interesting. But I get BBC are just chasing NPC clicks from sites like HN
- pram 2y agoWild speculation with zero evidence since no one else is: it wasn't broken, and the US/CIA intentionally moved it so they could communicate with agents in SA/Chile (during Allende etc)
- andrewstuart 2y agoSorry it was me. I was going to put it back and then I got distracted and forgot.
- verisimi 2y agoPlease tidy your space.
- RantyDave 2y agoWe now have historians investigating things that happened in my lifetime. Not sure if this is awesome or not.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoWelcome to getting old!
- another4578 2y agoSatcom 3 was lost after launch in 1979 and wound up in a non-geosynchronous orbit. On a tour of the satellite manufacturer, RCA Astro, years after the loss, we heard this story: during the transfer of control from NASA to RCA Astro contact was lost and not re-established. Eventually the U.S. military was asked, "Errrh, did you see where Satcom 3 went?". The answer came back "Yup, looks like isn't in the geosynchronous orbit you expected". The thought was that during the handover a command to fire the apogee motor was inadvertently sent and obeyed! The fix for FUTURE launches was a protocol of checksummed commands. Beyond that, the new, more cautious sequence, became: 1. uplink dangerous command. 2. spacecraft verifies checksum and downlinks a copy of the proposed dangerous command 3. a keylock on the RCA command console is turned on and the "execute that dangerous command" instruction is uplinked. 4. upon verifying the execute command's checksum, the dangerous command is executed. No further launches suffered a failure similar to Satcom 3. Satcom 3's hulk is still in orbit. See: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1979-101A https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id... https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/satcom-1.htm#:~:text=Satcom%203 https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/satcom-1.htm#:~:text=Sat...