An interesting article in today's
Daily
Wireless (
Satellite
Jammer?), pointing to
The Register's
US deploys satellite jamming tech (really satellite jamming
units), which itself points to Bill Gertz in the
Washington
Times:
U.S.
deploys warfare unit to jam enemy satellites.
The mission of the
76th
Space Control Squadron, descended from World War II's
'Flying
Tigers', is
Air Force Space Command's offensive and
defensive counterspace unit responsible for operating space control
capabilities to rapidly achieve flexible and versatile space
superiority in support of theater campaigns. The unit participates
in the evaluation and operation of counterspace technologies to
meet combatant commander requirements.
The
Daily Wireless site is down at this time (I get a 'Call
to undefined function message_die()') trying to load the main page
or the specific article).
The article in my rss reader mentions Intelsat 804, which failed in
January 2005:
Another Intelsat Dark: Cause Unknown
Intelsat,
this January, reported their
Intelsat 804 (see:
footprint,
Lyngsat,
specs &
Lockheed Martin),
failed in
orbit, the second such failure for the satellite operator in
less than two months.
The satellite was uninsured.
Intelsat said their
IS-804 suffered "
a
sudden and unexpected electrical power system anomaly" Friday
evening, rendering the satellite totally and permanently unusable.
Many customers of the satellite had been moved to other satellites
by Sunday evening.
"Intelsat currently believes that there is no connection between
this event and [
the
IA-7 satellite failure] less then two months earlier, since the
two satellites were manufactured by different companies and their
designs are different," the statement said.
The manufacturer of the
Intelsat 804 was
Lockheed Martin, which used their
AS-7000 satellite plaform [sic]. Meanwhile, Intelsat's IA-7
satellite that failed in November, was built by a different company
(
Space
Systems/Loral) and had a completely different,
1300 space platform.
On November 28, 2004, Intelsat-7 went dark. It also
experienced a sudden and unexpected electrical distribution
anomaly".
