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Advertisement: Iridium Satellites May Come Down Soon

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Look out for Iridium satellite flares — while you can!

All 90 spacecraft may be brought down


in the wake of Iridium LLC’s bankruptcy. Dave Sewell of Wilmington, Delaware, photographed
this glint of reflected sunlight from Iridium satellite number 16 on March 7th. He used an
Olympus OM-1 camera with a 50-millimeter lens at f/4 to take a 10-second exposure on Kodak
200 Elite II film. See www.heavens-above.com for your local Iridium flare predictions.

Iridium Satellites May Come Down Soon


Astronomers have had mixed feelings the spacecraft emerges.
about the Iridium network of communi- Scott Wyman, a spokesman for Mo-
cations satellites, which was established to torola, Inc. (the company that built the
enable globetrotters to use portable tele- satellites and retains remote control of
phones any place on Earth. Since their them), told Sky & Telescope that “the po-
debut in 1997 the spacecraft have delight-
ed many skywatchers by briefly reflecting
tential to deorbit was built into the de-
sign” of the satellites, and “Iridium and Advertisement
sunlight as they creep across the sky, cre- the court” have given Motorola permis-
ating flares that can outshine Venus for sion to do so — the motivation being
several seconds (S&T: May 1998, page long-standing U.S. space policy to mini-
36). However, they have also interfered mize debris in low Earth orbit. But nei-
with radio observations of emissions ther Wyman nor Iridium lawyer Casey
from the important hydroxyl (OH) radi- Rice would say how or when this will be
cal. Those emissions are used to study done. Aviation Now reports that it could
cool stellar atmospheres and star-form- take Motorola up to two years to bring
ing clouds. Prohibited in principle by in- all the spacecraft down into the Earth’s
ternational law, this radio interference atmosphere, where they would burn up.
has prompted lengthy and contentious As this issue of Sky & Telescope went to
negotiations between astronomers and press Motorola was still operating the
the satellites’ owners and operators satellite network, and its strong signals
(S&T: December 1998, page 16). were still being picked up by interference
Now it appears that astronomers may monitors at the Very Large Array radio-
not have Iridium in their skies much telescope site in New Mexico.
longer. Iridium LLC, the company that If the satellites really are brought down
owned the satellites and ran the system, or at least turned off, Iridium’s failure
declared bankruptcy last year, along with will provide a respite for the dedicated
several affiliated entities. Collectively cadre of radio astronomers who spent
they owe creditors more than $1 billion. years fighting Motorola and Iridium for
With ordinary cellular-telephone net- radio-quiet skies. “When I started out,
works rapidly expanding, far too few this was a hobby,” says Westerbork Ob-
customers were willing to pay as much servatory director Willem Baan, refer-
as $3,000 for a special Iridium tele- ring to the spectrum-usage negotiations
phone and up to $7 per minute to use he carried out throughout the 1990s.
it. On March 17th Iridium asked the Now, he says, it’s clear that radio obser-
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for permission vatories and astronomy funding agencies
to “commence the de-orbiting of the need to support full-time efforts to save
Iridium Satellites” if no serious bid for critical scientific frequencies.

©2000 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope July 2000 23

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