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Rogue satellite no threat to Yk
A rogue telecommunications satellite damaged in April is heading toward the NWT, but Yellowknife cable TV viewers and Internet recipients have nothing to fear, according to NorthwesTel.
The Galaxy 15 satellite has been drifting across the North and disrupting the services of other satellites since Intelsat lost control of it in April. In this photo, satellite’s manufacturers, Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Virginia, prepare the satellite for its launch in 2005. – photo courtesy of Orbital Sciences Corporation
Sunny Patch, corporate communications manager with NorthwestTel, said Galaxy 15, as the rogue satellite is called, could interfere with transmissions this October from the satellite her company uses, the Anik F2 satellite, which provides Internet, phone and cable television services in 25 communities in Nunavut and 10 in NWT.
But it will not affect Yellowknife because the city’s wireless services are provided through a fibre optic cable that runs to Yellowknife from High Level, Alta.
“With any luck, it’ll be dead by then,” said Dianne VanBeber, vice-president of Investor Relations for the Baltimore-based company Intelsat, which owns Galaxy 15.
The satellite was launched in 2005. It weighs 4,171 lbs and cost about $250 million. The satellite was damaged in early April and stopped responding to operational commands from Intelsat, which tells the satellite whether to stay in one place or to move somewhere else, said VanBeber. Now the satellite is drifting eastward across the Arctic.
Galaxy 15 is also not responding to commands that will tell the company how it was damaged or what is wrong with it. The Galaxy 12, launched in 2003 as a reserve satellite, has taken over communication transmission responsibilities from the Galaxy 15. But the Galaxy 15 is still sending television cable broadcasting signals to Earth, and as it drifts across the Arctic, it will disrupt the services of other satellites that cross its path.
VanBeber compared the situation to two mirrors reflecting the same image as one passes the other.
“If you’re looking at a mirror, it’s sending its image back to you,” she said. “But if another mirror came around the top of that mirror and was passing by, that would also reflect the image you were sending back as well. When you have two different signals coming down, that creates the interference,” she said.
VanBeber hopes the satellite will either re-boot and start functioning normally again or stop functioning altogether by the time it is supposed to pass by Anik F3 on Sept. 9.
That’s a possibility because the satellite’s components will eventually point away from the Earth and toward the sun. If this happens, the satellite’s solar panels will be unable to track the solar rays, causing the satellite to lose power and shut down.
The satellite’s manufacturers figure this could happen anytime between now and Sept. 9. If it does stop functioning permanently, the satellite won’t fall from the sky and crash into earth. Rather, it will remain in space as “orbital debris.”
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