Zombie Sat May Soon Be Back In Business

"Intelsal thinks there is a good chance it will regain use of
Galaxy 15, the wayward “Zombie Sat” that terrorized telecom
satellite neighborhoods around the globe until it was brought
under control late last month."

See:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gener...&channel=space

On Jan 14, 8:57*pm, wrote:
"Intelsal thinks there is a good chance it will regain use of
Galaxy 15, the wayward “Zombie Sat” that terrorized telecom
satellite neighborhoods around the globe until it was brought
under control late last month."

See:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gener...s/asd/2011/01/....

all brought to you by static electricity and poor software....

On Jan 14, 5:57*pm, wrote:
"Intelsal thinks there is a good chance it will regain use of
Galaxy 15, the wayward “Zombie Sat” that terrorized telecom
satellite neighborhoods around the globe until it was brought
under control late last month."

See:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gener...s/asd/2011/01/....

That's nothing compared to the one that had to first orbit the moon a
couple times before regaining its intended terrestrial usage (though
not ideally situated). Now that's what I'd call a nifty save.

http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites...onCommsat.html

~ BG

No mention of life expectancy of Galaxy 15 with all these unintended maneuvers
under its belt?

Dave

In article dcb1756d-0cca-4322-8b93-096b5226c350
@n11g2000yqh.googlegroups.com, says...

On Jan 14, 8:57*pm, wrote:
"Intelsal thinks there is a good chance it will regain use of
Galaxy 15, the wayward ?Zombie Sat? that terrorized telecom
satellite neighborhoods around the globe until it was brought
under control late last month."

See:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gener...s/asd/2011/01/...

all brought to you by static electricity and poor software....

Your vast over simplification of the root cause is noted.

It's really hard to make hardware and software completely immune to bit-
flips caused by radiation. This is almost never a problem on Earth
because when an electronic device mysteriously stops working, physically
turning it off and then back on again (i.e. reboot) often times is all
you need to do.

This is physically impossible to do with a satellite in GEO. In this
case, it sounds like Galaxy 15 essentially physically rebooted itself.
Unfortunately, it took a really long time for this to happen.

Jeff
--
"Had Constellation actually been focused on building an Earth-Moon
transportation system, it might have survived. The decision to have it
first build a costly and superfluous Earth-to-orbit transportation
system (Ares I) was a fatal mistake.", Henry Spencer 1/2/2011

On Jan 16, 11:13*pm, David Spain wrote:
No mention of life expectancy of Galaxy 15 with all these unintended maneuvers
under its belt?

Dave

That's still nothing compared to the other previous one that had to
first orbit the moon a couple times before regaining its intended
terrestrial usage (though it's not ideally situated). Now that's what
I'd call a nifty satellite save.

http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites...onCommsat.html

~ BG