Scientists are baffled after the UK’s oldest satellite, Skynet-1A, which was launched in 1969, appears to have moved to a completely different position in its geostationary orbit 35,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, and no one knows who did it or why. As the BBC reports, the communications satellite mysteriously drifted westward, from over the east coast of Africa to a location over the American continent, even though gravitational changes should have moved it further east.
According to the report, orbital mechanics simply cannot explain their driftwhich only leaves open one obvious possibility: someone moved Skynet-1A. Worse still, its new position could be dangerous for many other geostationary satellites orbiting the Earth.
“It is now in what we call a gravity well at 105 degrees west longitude, wandering back and forth like a marble at the bottom of a bowl,” space consultant Stuart Eves explains to the BBC. And unfortunately, This makes it approach other satellites on a regular basis.. Since it is inactive, there is a risk of it colliding with something, and since it is our satellite, we are still responsible for it.”
Despite her best efforts, Eves has yet to Find out why the UK’s oldest spacecraft went mysteriously off course thousands of kilometers to the west.
Although it helped British forces communicate with other bases around the world, Skynet-1A was built and launched in the United States.
“The Americans originally controlled the satellite in orbit – adds Graham Davison, who managed the satellite at the Royal Air Force Oakhanger operations center in the United Kingdom -. “They compared all our software with theirs, before finally handing control over to the RAF.” But Davison could not remember when or if the control was returned to the US.
The NASA documents suggest that the United States was in control when Oakhanger lost sight of the old satellite in June 1977. However, instead of being retired in the “orbital graveyard” of our planetwhere most geostationary satellites will spend the rest of their days as space junk, Skynet-1A was moved to a much more unfortunate location.
Our planet’s orbit has become incredibly disordered, particularly at the current spacecraft longitude. an active satellite can approach space debris up to four times a day. Without going any further, last month, a Boeing satellite exploded in about 500 traceable fragments of debris in geostationary orbit.
Fortunately, numerous companies are working on a possible solution: specially designed spacecraft that can take decommissioned satellites out of the sky and move them out of danger.
Scientists have long warned about a situation called Kessler syndrome, in which a space junk collision could lead to a cascading series of events that turn an already dangerous space junk problem into an orbital crisis.