Look out for Iridium satellite flares while you can!

All 90 spacecraft may be brought down

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

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