Starband Outage

Factual Questions
1

I have Starband two-way internet via satillite. They’ve lost contact with IA-7 and say it’s not repairable. They are working on short term and long term solutions.

Apparently the short term solution will be dialup. But the long term may be moving some customers to a different satillite. I use the same dish for TV and internet. Have three feedhorns on one dish. I’d imagine that they will have to fabricate a new bracket to position the feedhorn to target a different satillite. If that can’t be done they might have to install another dish.

Anyone have other ideas on how they could solve the problem? A new satillite is not normally an off the shelf item.

2

Fortunately they’re already planning on launching IA-8 on December 17 (or therabouts.) I don’t know where it will be in relation to 7, though.

3

That’s interseting. Perhaps IA-7 was near the end of it’s planned life and just died early.

Do they de-orbit the old satillites to make room for the new ones. Ideally you’d like to have the new one in the same position as the old one, right?

4

According to this the satellite was only 5 years old. Normally they will last a good 10 years at least.

Geostationary satellites’ lifespans are normally set by the amount of manoeuvering fuel they carry. Once they can’t hold postion they get retired. It would normally be pushed to a higher orbit, which would mean that it would appear to slowly drift westward.

With a catastrophic failure such as IA-7 suffered, I guess it would depend on whether it is still under control or not. If it can be controlled, then that’s what will happen. It would be a nuisance if it is dead meat though. The orbital positions, especially around where it is, are valuable property, and normally another satellite would be moved to its old position.