Is anyone else, um, vaguely unsettled by this half-a-century-old mystery?
Launched in 1969, just a few months after humans first set foot on the Moon, [Britain's] Skynet-1A was put high above Africa's east coast to relay communications for British forces. ...
But today, curiously, Skynet-1A is actually half a planet away, in a position 22,369 miles (36,000km) above the Americas.
Now, if you're like me, that might not sound so odd. I mean, it's a satellite in space, right? So it just sort of ... drifts, right? Like a boat.
Not quite! It turns out that "orbital mechanics mean it's unlikely the half-tonne military spacecraft simply drifted to its current location."
Almost certainly, it was commanded to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s to take it westwards. The question is who that was and with what authority and purpose?
The answer:
There is the possibility that the United States may have had something to do with the shift. The craft was manufactured in the U.S., while American specialists tested its software before handing over control to England at the RAF Oakhanger facility.
There were apparently regular instances of the satellite being controlled on U.S. soil:
A Skynet team from Oakhanger would go to the USAF satellite facility in Sunnyvale [California] (colloquially known as the Blue Cube) and operate Skynet during 'Oakout'. This was when control was temporarily transferred to the US while Oakhanger was down for essential maintenance. Perhaps the move could have happened then?
Now, ultimately it might not seem all that relevant. There are, after all, more than 11,000 satellites zipping above the planet. What difference does it make if one of them is over Mozambique or the East Pacific Rise?
Well, apparently it matters quite a bit:
[Skynet is] now in what we call a 'gravity well' at 105 degrees West longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis.
Because it's dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it's 'our' satellite we're still responsible for it...
Imagine being the team in charge of dealing with this 50-year-old hunk of potentially catastrophic space junk:
Hopefully that satellite stays in its lane and doesn't cause any trouble.
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