SES-3 countdown ticker

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chadg2

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Apr 2, 2006
623
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Maiden Rock, WI
How could one start a countdown ticker for SES-3 from launch date to expected end of Life that counts down years, months, days, minutes, seconds of wasted SES-3's life as a in-orbit spare satellite. It would be nice to have this come up as a pop-up on these type of forums so someone that can get SES-3 active somewhere at some location across the arc.
 
or if Directv won't let them activate it there move Galaxy 28 over to 103W and put SES3 in where Galaxy 28 is now and get NBC on it.
 
SES has since revised the SES-3 lifespan down to 13.9 years from launch, or, in their estimation, June 2025. Presumably maneuvering and briefly parking the satellite over the Far East in the year after launch rather than going directly to 103°W lowered the lifespan. Then again, the lifespans are just estimates anyway. AMC-1 was launched in September of 1996 with a 15 year lifespan, but here we 18 years later still complaining about the screwy Ku skew. On top of that, SES seems to think the old bird still has a good few years of life left, as they have indicated that, once SES-3 is activated, AMC-1 will be moved to 47.5°W to provide Ku services from that orbital slot.
 
I’ve given up on SES-3 happening anytime soon.
I’m going to go ahead and setup a spare as a dedicated dish for NBC/COZI...
 
I've never had a problem with AMC 1's skew for the NBC fronthauls, at least on a 1.2m. They are so strong that they come in just fine even with the skew on your dish way off from the offset that AMC 1 requires.

It's those darn NBC backhauls that usually need that extra bit of signal strength that requires making a trip out to the dish to twist the LNB -26 degrees on a regular basis =/
 
I never would've thought that last spring when the predicted turn on date for SES3 was the end of august, that we would still be on AMC1 when the snow starts falling again this winter. Looks like snow will be first and maybe SES3 by August 2015? Lets just say 2016 for safe measure. Maybe AMC1 will go down in the books as the longest living satellite in history.
 
Vanguard is the longest artificial satellite in orbit but amc 1 should be the longest tv Satellite in orbit.
 
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