Could sky satelite ever break down?

martin57

Was just wondering this today looking at shy, if the satelite could ever break down leaving sky viewers without any reception for months on end. As sky has been in existance for, must be at least 15 years and it seems an ultra dependable technology I suppose its a very remote possibility.


martin

superscaper

No idea how big Sky's satellite network is so don't know how much redundancy there is but could be quite easy for one or two satellites to be permanently disabled by some debris. But I'm sure a big company like sky is well aware of that risk and has plenty of spare satellites for redundancy purposes.

JezCooke

Sky digital uses four satellites close together at 28.2 degrees East (Astra 2A, 2B and 2D) and 28.5 degrees East (Eurobird). So if one were to fail it would only take out one quarter of the bandwidth available. Realistically though due to their extremely high cost satellites tend to be made to very high precision and contain many redundant systems (so that if one thing fails there is a duplicate (or several duplicates) that will take over). The oldest satellite at 28.2E (2A) was launched in 1998, the satellites have a life expectancy of around 15 years. Analogue Sky used the Astra 1 satellites at 19.2E.

superscaper

JezCooke wrote:

Sky digital uses four satellites close together at 28.2 degrees East (Astra 2A, 2B and 2D) and 28.5 degrees East (Eurobird). So if one were to fail it would only take out one quarter of the bandwidth available. Realistically though due to their extremely high cost satellites tend to be made to very high precision and contain many redundant systems (so that if one thing fails there is a duplicate (or several duplicates) that will take over). The oldest satellite at 28.2E (2A) was launched in 1998, the satellites have a life expectancy of around 15 years. Analogue Sky used the Astra 1 satellites at 19.2E.

Well there you go, much better than my fluffy answer, although I do know the USA GPS satellites have spares.

dazed

Our sky cuts out as we are on the flight path of John Lennon airport whenever a plane goes over transmitting

Dennis99

Aliens could always shoot the satellites down I suppose if they come to invade Earth.

Astaroth

I didnt think that sky owned any of the satellites it used but simply "rented" bandwidth from another company?

JezCooke

Astaroth wrote:

I didnt think that sky owned any of the satellites it used but simply "rented" bandwidth from another company?

Correct, the Astra satellites are owned by SES (Société Européenne des Satellites) and Eurobird 1 is owned by Eutelsat.