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Slashdot Reports:

An anonymous reader writes “Sometime this morning (Sept. 19) Telstar 4 had a major onboard failure. I just checked a few minutes ago and there are CW carriers up on 11700 MHz V & 12200 MHz H, so the spacecraft would appear to still be in its orbital slot - just no traffic. The Loral Skynet site has no mention of this yet, but supposedly Telstar 8 was already scheduled to replace T4, so they may just speed the process up. This turn of events will no doubt be of some small concern to Intelsat, who recently agreed to purchase most of Loral’s US domestic fleet, including T4.”

A major crisis! (Score:5, Funny)
by mercuryresearch (680293) on Friday September 19, @05:09PM (#7008415)

This is a crisis of earth-shattering proportions for many.

One of Telstar 4’s nicknames in the industry is “nookiesat” — as it carries several of the leading porn channels in the US. :-)

This may affect you because (Score:5, Informative)
by cleveland61 (321761) on Friday September 19, @05:16PM (#7008482)

Telstar 4 is one of the most heavily used TV satellites. We had to move our channels over to Telstar 6 for the time being. (I work for the Erotic Networks) It caries many of the east coast ABC and CBS feeds. I’m sure they were scrambling to find alternate carriers just like we were this morning.

Loral shuts down satellite due to short circuit
Reuters, 09.19.03, 2:39 PM ET

NEW YORK, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Bankrupt satellite operator and maker Loral Space & Communications Ltd. said on Friday one of its North American satellites shut down after a power short circuit.

The company, which has already agreed to sell the Telstar 4 satellite to Intelsat, said it is working with manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. (nyse: LMT - news - people) to determine the cause of the problem and to restore service if possible.

Loral said it was able to make capacity available to most customers using the Telstar 4. Many of these customers had their service restored at the time of the statement, the company said.

Telstar 4 is Down

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