>At 10:23 PM 5/19/98 -0600, Ron Lee wrote: >>Just heard on the news that Galaxy 4 is spinning unexpectedly. >>I don't know the catalog number. Robert Sheaffer <sheaffer@netcom.com> said: >That's one of the major geosynchronous TV satellites for the U.S., and >yep, it's **gone** from C-band. It was there the last time I looked >for it. And there's nothing wrong with my dish, because the other >birds are still there. CBS was a heavy user of this one, as were >several television evangelist channels (such a loss!), and a lot >of feeds for syndicated programming. CBS and a few others are *really* >going to have to scramble to stay on the air. > >Did that Asiasat settle down into its post-lunar orbit? They're gonna >be *needing* it! nothing nearly so drastic ... A couple of years ago there was a pretty drastic shortage of C-Band transponders, but since then there have been a couple of additional backup satellites (Brasilsat A1 and Telstar 303). There's a bit of excess capacity and all of the users are transitioning to backup satellites. In any case it isn't as drastic a situation as when Telstar 401 was "fried" a couple of years ago. The satellite is under active control and the ground controllers are optomistic that they can get it back. Galaxy 4 is a Hughes HS-601 model (a box with two large solar arrays). Its position is 99 degrees West. I believe it's in a fairly slow spin, about once every nine minutes. The incident occured at about 6:20 pm EDT and happened gradually (e.g. degraded signal before loss as opposed to Telstar 401 which was almost instantaneous). Last I heard they're hoping to get it under control and more information should be available on Wednesday. Here's the latest TLEs I have in case anybody wants to try to spot it spinning - GALAXY 4 1 22694U 93039A 98028.37142641 -.00000133 00000-0 00000+0 0 8246 2 22694 0.0131 313.3236 0001805 352.1890 216.6179 1.00272397 15091 Philip Chien, KC4YER Earth News world (in)famous writer, science fiction fan, ham radio operator, all-around nice guy, etc.