Somebody moved UK's oldest satellite, and no-one knows who or why
Somebody moved UK's oldest satellite, and no-one knows who or why
Britain's oldest satellite is in the wrong part of the sky, but no-one's really sure who moved it.
"It's still relevant because whoever did move Skynet-1A did us few favours," says space consultant Dr Stuart Eves.
"It's now in what we call a 'gravity well' at 105 degrees West longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis.
"Because it's dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it's 'our' satellite we're still responsible for it," he explains.
So basically, you can't park there mate!
'oi mate you have a loicense to move that spacr junk'
It was manufactured by the Americans, put into space by the Americans, controlled by the Americans until they handed over control to the RAF, and was stated in the article to be "dual control". It was clearly the Americans.
Why is an event that happened in the 1970s getting an article now?
Because space history and space archaeology is super cool :-D
Skynet
Ruh roh
The BBC have preempted your joke
It might be tempting to reach for a conspiracy theory or two, not least because it's hard to hear the name "Skynet" without thinking of the malevolent, self-aware artificial intelligence (AI) system in The Terminator movie franchise.
But there's no connection other than the name and, in any case, real life is always more prosaic.
Would there be any sort of logs either from the systems used to move the satellite, or aboard the satellite itself, to help answer the who question, if nothing else?
I know absolutely fuck all about satellites but I have to assume on something this old, that it's extremely unlikely.