The launch of the UK’s Skynet 5B military communications satellite from French Guiana has been delayed.
“We tried to understand what’s going on in the electronic equipment but unfortunately we did not succeed,” explained Jean-Yves Le Gall from Arianespace, the company which runs the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
Hold on a minute, wasn’t Skynet the name of the computer-based defence system, created in a temporal paradox using the ‘terminator chip’ which shortly after it became sentient decided to exterminate mankind?
No, don’t worry thinking about it – Yes, it was.
I hope they know what they’re doing.
“There are a series of umbilical connections and we communicate with 5B night and day. We’re doing final battery charging, making sure it is optimised for launch,” a spokesman told BBC News.
Shit, it runs on batteries, probably a C type or maybe two AAs. That explains why they’re having trouble getting it to fly; I think the Americans use petrol or something.
“The team will be monitoring the charge on the lithium ion battery, and checking it is on external power. Once we’ve got a resumed launch time, we will go with our standard test sequence,” he told BBC News.
Oh, I was wrong, obviously it would be silly to use an AA battery. They’re using one of those lithium ones like you put in your camera.
Skynet 5b? More like Skynot 2B.
