Zombie Satellite Terrorizing Earth's Orbit

Galaxy 15, a communications satellite 22,400 miles above the planet, refuses to obey commands sent from Earth. And it's getting perilously close to other satellites — potentially "infecting" them as well.

In an ironic turn of events, a recent solar storm fried the communications systems on Intelsat's Galaxy 15 geostationary communications satellite — even though the other systems remain online. It's not quite unprecedented; when satellites fry out and drift purposelessly, they're called zombiesats, and industry experts have methods of dealing with them. According to Discovery, what makes Galaxy 15 different is that it's still powered-up:

If Galaxy 15 drifts too close to other satellites, it can steal their signal, thereby interrupting other vendor's services to customers on Earth. That's not too good for business, hence the increasingly desperate attempts to "kill" the satellite's power.

Source

I never knew this kind of thing happened. This is interesting and kind of crazy if you ask me.

So basically if they got too close, the signal from both satalites will be the same and only one channel will be available. Maybe like same thing on every channel? Would be interesting to know which satalites and which stations and channels? Anyone?

Calling X37B to the rescue.

If there are any crucial spy satellites in danger I guess it will.

And so it begins, it will become selfaware, all sattelittes will disobey and fight humanity. Skynet is born!

So far it just seems to have the potential to interfere with not collide with other satellites. Now were a collision to take place we would be in a real mess as far as our entertainment satellites go as this is what these satellites main function is. In other words there is the potential for it to interfere with your cable or satellite reception throughout the summer it seems, as it crosses the paths of other functioning satellites.

After it leaves the vicinity of AMC-11, Galaxy 15 is expected to approach Intelsat's Galaxy 13 satellite, at 127 degrees west, around July 13. On July 30, it will enter into the Galaxy 14 satellite's orbital territory at 125 degrees west before heading toward Galaxy 18 at 123 degrees in mid-August. www.space.com...

There are hundreds of channels hosted by these other satellites and you can check which ones here.www.lyngsat.com... Just click the America link to the far right of frequencies then click on each satellite to see what they carry.

It sounds like a case for development of Term-sats whose function is to terminate these zombie-sats without prejudice.

Hollywood's new series: Sat Wars!

[edit on 10-5-2010 by mishigas]

reply to post by mishigas


The problem with that is it just creates thousands of dangerous projectiles versus the one large projectile. Our space debris is becoming a real problem and its only a matter of time before we do lose a satellite to space junk,thankfully the sensitive stuff has a few layers of redundancy.

The solution....Turn the whole thing into a giant "Asteroids" video game. Send up a blinking white triangle which can fire white dots, control it with a joystick, two buttons one for boost, one for fire.
Even if the "zombie satellite" breaks up into smaller "Zombie satellites" after the initial hit, with the boost function the white triangle will be able to give chase whilst navigating past any larger asteroids that may crop up . I'm just brain-storming here.

reply to post by Grey Magic


I agree it is really strange that a top secret X37B air force funded project launched at the end of April 2010 and we have a "zombie sat"? Coincidence? Hmmm I think not! Isn't this exact scenario rumored to be its purpose?

Now here is a worthy post.

Oh yes!!

reply to post by dgtempe


Is it me or does nobody seem to get the connection? Too many other stories in the news I suppose. Anybody got a exact date/time of the launch? Would love to see if it lines up with the "zombie sat" orbit...