When people think of the Apollo era of spaceflight, either it’s a bygone period of incessant exploration, or it was completely faked. However, relics from this golden age still haunt the icy black sea above our heads. A dead British satellite launched in 1969 now poses a threat to modern spaceflight. Skynet-1A drifted 22,300 miles from a graveyard position to an area with active satellite traffic. Gravity didn’t pull the satellite, a ground controller moved it.

Skynet in this context is not an artificial intelligence system determined to wipe out humanity, but a series of communications satellites. Skynet-1A was launched into a geostationary orbit over the east coast of Africa to provide a communications link for the British Army to stay in touch with its forces deployed across Asia. The satellite was not very useful as it stopped working after a few years.

The British expected gravity to bring Skynet-1A out over the Indian Ocean. However, the satellite traveled in the opposite direction and eventually ended up over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Latin America. The new position makes an orbital collision much more likely. This did not happen by chance. An expert told the BBC that someone moved Skynet-1A there:

It is almost certain that it was ordered to fire its thrusters in the mid-1970s to propel it westward. The question is who it was, with what authority and with what objective?

It’s fascinating that key information about a once-vital national security asset could simply evaporate. But, fascination aside, you might also reasonably wonder why this still matters. After all, we’re talking about space debris left behind 50 years ago.

“It’s still relevant because whoever moved Skynet-1A did us a disservice,” says space consultant Dr. Stuart Eves.

“It is now in what we call a ‘gravity well’ at 105 degrees west longitude, wandering back and forth like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately, this regularly brings it closer to other satellite traffic.

“As it is dead, the risk is that it hits something, and as it is ‘our’ satellite, we are still responsible for it,” he explains.

Who moved Skynet-1A? The simple answer is that we don’t know. The long answer is that he was probably an American. Although billed as Britain’s oldest satellite, the device was built by American electronics manufacturer Philco, a division of Ford at the time. The satellite was put into orbit on a US Air Force Delta rocket. The USAF ensured that Skynet-1A was fully functional before handing it over to the Royal Air Force.

Control of Skynet-1A occasionally returned to the USAF when the British control center at RAF Oakhanger was under maintenance. British experts say incomplete official records indicate that Skynet-1A was under USAF control when contact was lost in June 1977. Regardless, it is the British satellite, so the former superpower must make sure his possessions don’t crash into another satellite.

The United States doesn’t need any help filling its orbit with space debris. A satellite built by Boeing exploded last month, littering the space with at least 20 large pieces of debris. These objects need to be tracked because they could collide with something else in orbit. If the debris hit something else, the collision would create more debris. Rinse and repeat until Earth is completely cut off from space.

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