For nearly five years the Canadian communications satellite known as Anik E-1 circled the earth without a serious hitch. Last spring, though, the $220 million spacecraft faltered. For hours, until users could switch over to backup systems, the transmission of all sorts of critical data--credit-card transactions, newspaper layouts, electronic paging requests, television and radio broadcasts--stopped. It took scientists a while, but they finally figured out what had caused the outage: storm damage.
Bad weather in outer space? No doubt about it. Experts think a spark shorted out the connections between the satellite's solar-power panels and several dozen of its radio relays....
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