Vulnerability of Satellite Communications
Hi, all. Good to be back. One of the things I was thinking about on the train back from lovely Winchester was the vulnerability of satellite communications. How many government services are (or soon will be) dependent on satellites? Anybody have a list?
Satellites are quite vulnerable. Two GPS satellites failed (in 1995 and 1997), launches have been known to go quite wrong, they are susceptible to jamming (both intentional and un) and as China demonstrated earlier this year, a missile explosion in a satellite’s orbital path is easy to do, if you have a few extra missiles lying about (and who doesn’t, these days?).
Quick question: How many vulnerable services could be backed up? HMG let a £15m contract for Loran back-up for navigation… How far off is equivalent functionality from mobile telephony services?
Anybody else thinking about this kind of stuff, or is it just the train ride that produces this effect?
August 1st, 2007 at 11:18 am
You already get this kind of mobile phone redundancy, at least in populous areas, due to the profusion of mobile phone masts.
August 1st, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Also part of the point of Galileo’s and GPS’s being interoperable is that it will provide increased redundancy. This is normally talked about as improving coverage and limiting the number of black holes, but of course it *also* would reduce the risks to the system if one satellite is blown up. You’d need a pretty substantial operation to out 60 satellites, wouldn’t you?
wg