The world’s two largest commercial satellite fleet operators are about to find out whether their unusually close collaboration over the past two months to head off potentially disastrous frequency interference caused by an uncontrolled satellite has been equal to the task.
Starting 23 May, Intelsat’s Galaxy 15 satellite, out of control since 5 April but with its electronics payload still active, was expected to close to within 0.5 degrees of SES’s AMC-11 satellite at 131 degrees east longitude in geostationary orbit some 36,000 kilometres over the equator.
Since AMC-11 and Galaxy 15 are both C-band satellites, Galaxy 15 threatens to pick up signals intended for AMC-11 and rebroadcast them in a way that is as uncontrollable as the wayward satellite’s drift along the geostationary arc.
Dozens of US television programmers are at risk of a service outage as a result. Galaxy 15 will pose a frequency-interference threat for AMC-11 over a nearly two-week period starting around 25 May. As luck would have it, the peak threat is over the long Memorial Day weekend in the United States, which runs through Monday, 31 May.
on May 24th, 2010 at 01:30
I think you mean 131 degrees West longitude.
cheers from Radio Australia