Satellite May Warn of Things to Come

 

It's hard to believe the scope of distruption one disrupted U.S. satellite caused. Millions of pagers went silent, radio and TV signals were interrupted, and the country witnessed how fragile its high-tech communications system can be.

 

Some experts warn that the incident could be a "preview of coming attractions" in the year 2000.

 

From space-based satellites to land-based telephone switches, countless critical communications systems could be affected by the year 2000 software flaw, which causes some computers to confuse 2000 with the year 1900.

 

Experts fear that many computer electronics either will freeze up or generate erroneous data when they are rolled over to Jan. 1, 2000.

 

The PanAmSat satellite outage is only a hint of the trouble that may be triggered by the so-called millennium bug, said John Pike, associate director of the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington think tank.

 

Satellite networks are a critical link to communications worldwide, from cellular phones to weapons guidance and aircraft navigation.

 

Yet the computers running those networks could be as vulnerable to the problem as the oldest mainframe, he said. The satellite networks rely on computers that are controlled by thousands of software programs and millions of lines of programming code, Pike said.

 

And it is those computers that are the likely year 2000 targets.

 

The computer systems are so extensive, it seems improbable that communications companies will be able to find every year 2000 problem, Pike said.

 

"It's not a question of whether there will be a problem," he said, "but rather where the problem will be."

 

Wherever it strikes, the year 2000 problem is expected to hit the software on the ground and, as a result, disrupt satellites in the air, agreed David C. Hall, a year 2000 expert and computer consultant in Oak Brook, Ill.

 

The PanAmSat satellite problem illustrates how huge numbers of people can be affected by a malfunction of only one high-tech machine, said Mark Haselkorn, a year 2000 consultant for the National Science Foundation.

 

It is imperative, Haselkorn said, that the entire communications industry - from satellite makers to local telephone companies - work together to solve the problem, something that hasn't yet emerged.

 

Source: Orlando Sentinel