GlobalStar Satellite Phones

[Scooter]

Here's a post that I started to write a week or so ago, and just finished this evening and posted in my blog.

While I’m supervising a bush camp of tree planters, I occasionally make use of a satellite phone for remote communications. These phones are invaluable for people working in extremely remote locations, where there is no cell or radio-phone coverage. Although they are a relatively new technology (I first saw them in widespread use in planting camps beginning about five years ago), their use has exploded in situations where the basic ability to communicate with the outside world is what matters, and where the cost is fairly irrelevant. For instance, as of last summer, GlobalStar (the provider that I’m familiar with) had over a quarter of a million phones in operation in over 120 countries around the world.

The way that the satellite phones work is quite simple. They are very similar to a cell phone in look and operation, but instead of getting a signal from a tower on a nearby mountaintop, the signal is transferred between the user and a satellite in low-earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit. GlobaStar has a network of 52 low Earth orbit satellites to provide coverage. The satellites fly about 1400 km above the earth, which in aeronautic terms is “fairly low.”

GlobalStar has a few problems, however. First of all, their satellites have to be close enough to an earth-based station (known as a gateway) to operate properly, so there are areas around the world where coverage does not exist. For instance, there are no gateways in remote areas of the ocean, because traffic in those areas is almost non-existent (except from passing ships). Therefore, even though the satellites fly over these areas, their phones don’t work there. Also, because the Globalstar satellites have an inclination of 52 degrees, they don’t provide coverage over the polar areas, which are “out of sight” of the satellites.

GlobalStar’s satellites were launched between 1998 and 2000, and were mostly expected to have a lifetime of seven to eight years. Accordingly, in 2005, some of the satellites started to be taken out of service. They are currently designing new satellites with much longer life expectancies, but I have no idea when they are being launched. I think they expected availability is around 2010, but I may stand to be corrected.

The big problem is that in early 2007, GlobalStar filed documents with the SEC in which they admitted to a problem with their S-band amplifiers (a critical part of the communications equipment) which would lead to a significant loss of operational capability by this year. In fact, I started having extreme difficulty in using my own satellite phone last summer. The company went so far as to issue the following statement last year: “Based on its most recent analysis, the Company now believes that, if the degradation of the S-band antenna amplifiers continues at the current rate or further accelerates, and if the Company is unsuccessful in developing additional technical solutions, the quality of two-way communications services will decline, and by some time in 2008 substantially all of the Company’s currently in-orbit satellites will cease to be able to support two-way communications services.” So in other words, the reliability of the GlobalStar network is highly questionable right now.

One of the other planting camps in my own company had a medical emergency today. An employee was found unconscious on a remote block by another member of her crew. She is quite fine this evening – the crew had the proper first aid personnel and gear on site to provide proper care, and a helicopter was called immediately to take her to the nearest hospital. However, the helicopter was summoned by satellite phone, using a GlobalStar phone. It worked well today, but we can’t count on the phones being reliable in all situations.

As a supervisor, I have to plan for safety every day, and have reliable methods of dealing with emergencies. My plans no longer rely on the assumption that my satellite phone will work. It’s funny – I spent fifteen years working in remote camps without a satellite phone, and never worried in the slightest. But now that I’ve become used to having it, I feel very uneasy knowing that the technology is no longer reliable.

[raven2003]

this year we switched to the iridium satellite phone good coverage excellent signal but more expensive than globalstar... it worked every time

[Scooter]

An Iridium satellite just hit a dormant Russian satellite ...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/12/us.r ... index.html

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Two satellites, one Russian and one American, have collided some 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia, the Russian and U.S. space agencies, said Thursday.


Debris from the collision poses no threat to the International Space Station.

The collision on Tuesday produced two large debris clouds, NASA said. The satellites collided at 10 kilometers (6 miles) per second, producing 500-600 new pieces of space debris, the U.S. Strategic Command said.

That debris is not believed to pose a threat to the International Space Station as long as the clouds continue moving in a lower orbit, according to NASA and the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos.

"There is some elevated risk, but it is considered to be very small to the ISS and to the other satellites that NASA has in orbit," NASA spokeswoman Beth Dickey told CNN. She said experts were still assessing the effects of the debris.

Mikhail Martirosov, from Russian mission control center, told Interfax news agency that the real threat from the debris will become obvious next week, once experts can calculate the trajectory of the fragments' descent.

"We have not received a warning of the possible danger to the ISS. The fragments may descend to the ISS orbit in several years, although I do not rule out that some fragments may go down within several days," Martirosov said.

The Russian satellite was launched in 1993 and had been out of service at the time of the collision, Roscosmos said.

The U.S. satellite was part of the Iridium global mobile communications system and is owned by a consortium headed by Motorola, the space agency said. It was launched in 1997.

CNN is "one of the larger non-government users" of Iridium, said Arnie Christianson, operations manager for CNN Satellites and Transmission.

"We do rely on it for communication in high-risk areas like Iraq, Afghanistan, and other remote locations," he said.

"Because of this collision, there may be a slightly longer hole in the coverage from one satellite to the next, but only in a very small area and for a very small amount of time. This is a collision, not an internal failure of the satellite or the system."

He questioned how U.S. government, which tracks all space junk larger than a football, didn't see this coming. But he said the system will continue to work without any noticeable problems.

A representative of Iridium could not immediately be reached for comment.

NASA's Dickey said a collision like this one is very rare.

"This is the first impact between two intact satellites traveling at hypervelocity," she said. "There have been some other occasions when things have accidentally collided in space, but they have been parts of rockets or parts of satellites and (produced) a very small cloud."

Major Regina Winchester, of the U.S. Strategic Command, said: "Space is getting pretty crowded. The fact that this hasn't happened before -- maybe we were getting a little bit lucky."

Winchester said Strategic Command tracks more than 18,000 pieces of manmade objects in space every day.

"Any time there's an event that creates more debris, it's a concern," she said. "All countries who have assets in space are going to be concerned simply because when there's more debris, there's a higher chance it's going to hit something."

[korno]

my favourite quote is from a helicopter pilot. Around giving us a call so he can pick us up at the end of the day. "What kind of sat-phone do you have, globalstar or one that works ?"

[Tupperfan]

Heli pilots are great for quotes:

"I think I'll ask the wife to put some weiner in the kraft dinner tonite"

"These are decent work hours, white man hours!" (With two amazing Namibian planters on board.)

[Scooter]

And for the conspiracy theorists out there ...

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Arc ... dness.html

[Scooter]

Here's an article about satellite-based texting:

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/sat-comms/

[Scooter]

If anyone is interested in satellite-based texting, look into InReach devices from Delorme. They're great.

I just saw this article, looks like Iridium is about to launch a bunch of new satellites to increase capacity:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/06/news/sp ... -stack-dom