Iridium (a cell phone co.) is set to let 66 satellites drop out of their orbit tonight.
Should be quite a show! Hope we can see it from my house!
Here’s the link to the article from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/377576.asp
Carpe Jugulum
Well. That’s what the link says, but I wouldn’t count on it happening. Satellites don’t simultaneously reenter just because their owner goes out of business.
Damn! We can’t pay this month’s antigravity invoice! All our satellites are doomed!
So in what parts of the world is this “meteor shower” visible? This seems like such a waste! Why don’t they try selling their satellitse in eBay?
I hate when that happens. Remember when the Donald had to declare bankruptcy and Trump Tower collapsed in a pile of rubble?
If you know anything about science it would be obvious that the 66 Iridium satellites will come to a halt in space while a low pitched humming sounds drops in pitch and fades out.
Actually, the last command given to the sattelites will be to drop them out of orbit. They all have small manuevering engines, which will be used to drop them into reentry rather than letting them stay up as space junk.
{{{Actually, the last command given to the sattelites will be to drop them out of orbit. They all have small manuevering engines, which will be used to drop them into reentry rather than letting them stay up as space junk.}}}—TheNerd
Jinkies! Where’s my catcher’s mitt?
–Kalél
TheHungerSite.com
“If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.”
“Well, there was that thing with the Cheese-Wiz…but I’m feeling much better now!” – John Astin, Night Court
This site http://www.heavens-above.com lists 3 Iridium flares (in my area) over the next seven days. A flare is when the sun reflects off the satellite and illuminates the observer. NPR reported that if no buyer was found that the Iridium service would be shut off Fri night. I didn’t catch when they would decay the orbits. It was also stated that the satellites would probably be ditched in a remote area like the Indian ocean.
I listened to the news announcer describe this coming denouement of the skies and thought, really? I’ll not attempt to second guess the previous posters who seem to know of which they speak.
Geez, without even knowing numbers, that seems like an awesome evaporation of capital assets. What’d it cost to build and launch those 66 satellites? Are they that far down the obsolesence trail that nobody thought them worth keeping in place (apparently the case)?
They would have been great targets for that laser targeting system we don’t have.
Oh yeah? What about Tea Clipper? Huh? Huh??
–
From an actual catalog: “Disco balls create an enchanting, dazzling effect of light shafts, adding movement and glamour to any occasion”
the Abrams’ bris was certainly memorable
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
Just be thankful if you don’t have any Iridium stock or didn’t buy a phone at the initial price. My company has one we used for Y2K contingency which became a $3,000 paperweight some time this evening.
Could you explain this in a little more detail? I couldn’t get into that site. What Iridium service? Why is there one? What observer? Seriously, I’m interested.
“His eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad,
His hair is as dark as a blackboard,
I wish he was mine, he’s really divine,
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.”
Rilchiam, Iridium is - er, was - a satellite phone system. Apparently it was too expensive and went belly up, and nobody wanted to buy the satellites. It’s a shame, I guess.
The interesting thing is the satellites, and the flares. It was named Iridium because the plan was a global network of satellites. Iridium was chosen as the name because the plan was putting 77 satellites up - 77 being the atomic number (from chemistry, the identifying number for an element) of the element Iridium. Neat, huh? One aspect of the satellites was the large flat face (dish) that worked like a large mirror. As the satellites orbited Earth, they would create angles between the face of the dish and the sun - causing light flashes in the sky from reflected sunlight. These flares would be very bright - some as strong as Magnitude -9.
The brightness scale for lights in the sky is funky - a negative number is brighter than a positive number. The larger negative, the brighter. It’s an exponential curve. The brightest stars are magnitude 1. The moon is, IIRC, mag -7. The flares are so bright, they are often visible in daylight - if you’re in the right location. Geometry is critical to see the sun flash. Off by even a mile and the brightness is affected.
The heavens above web site is a site that tracks satellites and their orbits, and calculates viewing times for any location on Earth. You plug in your coordinates and it crunches out a list of visible satellites. Includes Mir, ISS, shuttle, and Iridium flares.
I used it a while back pretty often, then got busy and forgot about it. I meant to try looking for daytime Iridium flares again - they were cool. I guess I missed out. 
Here is a link to more info on whats going to happen to the Iridium satelites.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000318/bs/tech_iridium_1.html
According to the link it is going to take at least a week to start deorbiting the sats and months till they all re-enter and burn up.
They can’t just drop them all at once,the risk of orbital collisions and uncontroled re-entry is too great.
The plan is to bring them down in a controled manner over remote areas of the ocean to prevent damage on the ground.
Peace
t lion
32 Bit Operating System
02 Bit Operator
Iridium is a totally expensive metal
Iridium satellite
The Main Mission Antenna is what reflects the sun to produce the flare.
http://www.heavens-above.com/iridiumhelp.asp? has more details.
Okay, I understand most of that, but what was the purpose of casting a flare?
“His eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad,
His hair is as dark as a blackboard,
I wish he was mine, he’s really divine,
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.”
The flare is wholly incidental-- just a neat thing that happens to occur when the highly reflective main mission antenna bounces the sunlight just right.
I’ll miss them flares. But I won’t miss having to hear about this thing from every analyst on the Street. Sheesh! And now I’m hearing it about GlobalStar.
“No, really, it’s different this time.” Feh
Change Your Password, Please and don’t use HTML, as it has been disabled, but you can learn about superscripts here