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Skynet-1A, the UK’s oldest satellite, has been discovered to have been moved from its original location over Africa’s east coast to an orbit 22,369 miles above the Americas. Launched in 1969, Skynet-1A was used as a communication relay for British forces. The half-tonne spacecraft died a few years after launch and should have drifted further to the east, out over the Indian Ocean, but its current location suggests it was commanded to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s. Questions about who authorized and for what purpose the move was made still remain, despite extensive research by experts worldwide.
The original logs for Skynet-1A show Americans had control of the satellite in orbit. Dr Aaron Bateman has previously remarked on the Skynet programme, “from a technological standpoint, Skynet-1A was more American than British since the United States both built and launched it”. It is possible that a Skynet team from the UK satellite facility, RAF Oakhanger in Hampshire, handed over control to the Americans. Rachel Hill, a PhD student from University College London, believes “perhaps the move could have happened then?”, referring to the “Oakout” periods when the Skynet team would go to the USAF satellite facility in Sunnyvale to operate Skynet when Oakhanger was down for maintenance.
Presently, Skynet-1A’s position brings it close to other satellite traffic, risking a collision. Due to the fact it is ‘our’ satellite, the responsibility to monitor its location still falls on the shoulders of the UK’s National Space Operations Centre. Technologies are currently in development to snare defunct satellites to prevent potentially catastrophic events from occurring, but funding for such developments is low. Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, believes “pieces of space junk are like ticking time bombs” and “we need to avoid what I call super-spreader events. When these things explode or something collides with them, it generates thousands of pieces of debris that then become a hazard to something else that we care about.
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