How did it happen? Someone moved the UK’s oldest satellite and there appears to be no record of who, when or why they did it. It was launched in 1969. But records of the day the Skynet satellite was moved are lost forever. Who did it?
It was on the east coast of Africa. It transmitted communications to the British forces. It stopped working years later. Gravity was supposed to pull it eastwards, over the Indian Ocean. But today, interestingly, Skynet 1A is actually half a planet away. 36,000 km above the American continent.
Cold war
For it to happen, it must have been ordered to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s to direct it westward. The question is who was it and with what authority and purpose. Why does it still matter? “It’s still relevant because whoever moved Skynet 1A did us few favors.” This is stated by Dr. Stuart Eve, space consultant. «Now it is close to the traffic of other satellites. You could crash into something. Since it is ‘our’ satellite, we are still responsible for it,” he explains.
In its time it revolutionized the United Kingdom’s telecommunications capacity. It allowed London to communicate securely with British forces as distant as Singapore. The United States built it and launched it. There was some dual control over the satellite.
time bomb
Official records suggest that final command was left in the hands of the Americans in June 1977. The Ministry of Defense claimed that Skynet 1A was being constantly monitored. Ultimately, the government would have to think about moving the old satellite to a safer location. Technologies are being developed to trap debris left in space. “Pieces of space debris are like time bombs,” observed Moriba Jah. He is a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
The day the Skynet satellite moved the countdown was activated. “When these things explode or something collides with them, thousands of pieces of debris are generated. These then become a danger to something that is more important to us.
