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Someone moved the UK’s oldest satellite – but there is no record of who did it and why.
Launched in 1969, just months after humanity managed to set foot on the Moon for the first time, the Skynet-1A was launched over the east coast of Africa to transmit communications for the British Armed Forces.
A few years later, when the satellite stopped working, it was expected that gravity would push it a little further east, over the Indian Ocean.
But today, interestingly, Skynet-1A is half a planet away from there, at a position 36 thousand km above the American continent.
According to the laws of astrodynamics, it is unlikely that the half-ton military satellite simply moved there on its own.
It is possible to say with almost total certainty that its thrusters were turned on in the 1970s to drive it westward. The question to be asked is: who did thisand with what authority and purpose.
Another intriguing point is that key information about this satellite — once a vital national security asset — could be lost.
But mysteries aside, we can also ask why this satellite continues to be important. After all, we are talking about a 50 year old space junk.
“It remains relevant because whoever moved Skynet-1A helped us very little,” says space consultant Stuart Eve.
“Now it’s in what we call ‘a gravity well‘ at 105 degrees west longitude, wandering back and forth, like a marble in a jar. And unfortunately that often puts it close to other transiting satellites.”
“As it is dead, the risk is that it could collide with something, and as it is ‘our’ satellite, we are responsible for it.”
Eves searched through old satellite catalogs, the National Archives, and talked to experts around the world, but he couldn’t find explanations for the behavior of Skynet-1A, which is the UK’s oldest satellite.
It’s tempting to think about conspiracy theories — even more so because it’s difficult to hear the name “Skynet” without thinking about the evil artificial intelligence system that tries to take over the world in the Terminator film series.
But there is no relation to it, other than the name. Real life is much more prosaic.
What is known is that Skynet-1A was produced in the USA by the now-defunct aerospace company Philco Ford and launched by an American Air Force Delta rocket.
“The first Skynet satellite revolutionized the UK’s telecommunications capabilities, allowing London to communicate securely with British forces as far away as Singapore. However, from a technological point of view, Skynet-1A was more American than Britishsince it was the USA that built and launched it”, says expert Aaron Bateman, in an article about the history of the Skynet program, which is now in its fifth generation.
This view is confirmed by Graham Davison, who operated Skynet 1A in the early 1970s from the UK operations center at RAF Oakhanger in Hampshire, England.
“The Americans initially controlled the satellite in orbit. They tested all our software with theirs, before eventually handing over control to the RAF,” says the retired engineer.
“Essentially there was double controlbut when or why Skynet-1A would have been returned to the Americans, which seems likely… I can’t remember,” says Davison, now in his 80s.
Rachel Hill, a PhD student at University College London, is also scouring the National Archives.
Your research raised a very reasonable hypothesis.
“A Skynet team from Oakhanger would go to the USAF satellite base in Sunnyvale (known informally as the ‘Blue Cube’) to operate Skynet during the ‘Oakout.’ This was when control was temporarily transferred to the US while Oakhanger was out of service for essential maintenance. Maybe the change happened at that moment”, speculates Hill.
The official — and incomplete — records of Skynet-1A suggest that final command of the satellite was left in American hands when Oakhanger lost sight of it in June 1977.
But however Skynet-1A was moved to its current position, it was put to “die” in a strange location and should have been placed in an area that is a “cemetery orbit“.
This region is higher in the sky, and is where space debris does not interfere with active telecommunications satellites. Using this orbit for space junk is the current industry standardbut in the 1970s no one cared about space sustainability.
Attitudes have changed since then, because the space is more congested. At 105 degrees west longitude, a satellite can come within just 50 km of space debris four times a day. It may seem like a long distance, but at the speeds these objects move, the risks of a collision are increasing.
The Ministry of Defense said Skynet-1A was constantly monitored by the UK’s National Space Operations Centre. Other satellite operators are warned when there will be close approaches so they can divert their satellites.
Ultimately, the British government may have to think about remove the old satellite to a safer location.
Technologies are being developed to collect space debris. The British space agency is funding efforts to do this at lower altitudes. The Americans and Chinese have already shown that this is possible even in higher orbits, such as Skynet-1A.
“Pieces of space junk are like time bombs“, says Moriba Jah, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.
“We need to avoid what I call super-spreading events. When these things explode or something collides with them, it creates thousands of pieces of debris that threaten other things we care about.”
