Rogue TV satellite brought to heel after auto reboot
Intelsat bird Galaxy 15 is responding to commands again, having exhausted its batteries over eight months of uncontrolled broadcasting, thus forcing an automatic reboot. The satellite rebooted on 23 December, and started transmitting its telemetry. Engineers from Intelsat picked that up and were able to get the rogue satellite …
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Prescient
" but in April this year "
Either you are prescient or just a little behind the times.
RE: Safe mode?
Err.. i think you'll find in this case it was "Space + F8".....
Oh yeah, let THAT one sink in.. oh yeah.. oooohh yeeeaaaahhh
I used to work for someone...
....that we joked would be ideally suited to performing field service on geostationary satellites ;-)
@Brian
Yeah, that actually made me a little sad inside every time you said it.
Worse
It rebooted and...
"Keyboard not found... press F1 to continue"
Safe Mode...
Yes they have a mouse brain on life support to use as a last resort failsafe.
but...
You can't enter Safe mode with only a mouse. You need keyboard.
Old news
Cordwainer Smith did the last-resort preserved mouse brain years ago (in "Think Blue, Count Two").
Not quite accurate...
Actually, the batteries weren't exhausted by "eight months of uncontrolled broadcasting," they were exhausted due to the solar cells no longer being pointed at the sun, due to saturation of the satellites "momentum wheels" which serve to keep the satellite from wobbling or tumbling.
Huh?
If the batteries were dead and the solar panels weren't aligned (which caused the batteries discharge), where did it get the power to reboot?
even a broken watch
get's the time right, 2 times a day...
Phew...
We should just all be glad it wasn't a GDI Ion Cannon!
BOOM, BOOM!
Wrong orbit...
Ion cannons aren't parked in geosync orbit; beam divergence would kill their effectiveness at that distance (the whole inverse-square law gets in the way).
Hence the name, "Low Orbit Ion Cannon."
;-)
Dead Man Switch
Maybe they should change the programming so that it will do an automatic reboot once a week unless it receives a command telling it not to, instead of waiting until the batteries run down.
And reboot during...
... the programme time slot for all of the crap that is on satillite tv nowadays!
ugh,,,
Automatic re-boots... right in the middle of watching a TV program...
I imagine the boot up sequence of a satellite is a little more complex than rebooting your pc, and would probably take more time than a add break in the middle of corrie....
If it was me setting up the system, I think I would set up some sort of failsafe system, not attached to the rest of the systems that can remotely force a re-boot (switch it off then on again) via some sort of loop antenna for receiving the signal so no matter what its orientation it can receive said signal
Just for giggles call it the DBS (David Bowman Switch)
black chopper because can you really trust all those satellites up there watching us?
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I think Al meant that if the sat was working properly the signal telling it not to reboot would be sent
if its messed up and not responding then it would not receive the signal telling it not to reboot and would then reboot itself without having to wait for the batteries to die
Satellite boot sequence
Satellite boot sequence on telly? Now this is something I'd watch! And record, and rewatch, and wait for the sequel.
Reruns
Maybe mankind should take this as a hint that the aliens are tired of those endless reruns of "I Love Lucy" and are wanting some better programming. But, will we take the hint?
Used satellites for sale
Low orbits
Solar powered
Re-bootable software
Free satellite TV
Buyer must arrange collection.
kinda like a burnt out reporter?
"Just haveta reboot, hun."
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