On the final day of 2024, Eutelsat’s OneWeb satellite tv for pc broadband service that covers a lot of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas was hit with a 48-hour energy outage — and, oddly sufficient, it is due to the intercalary year.
Apparently, the corporate didn’t account for the additional day in 2024 in not less than one among their methods, which created a timing challenge.
“We are able to affirm that the problem was attributable to a intercalary year drawback, associated to day 366 in 2024, which impacted the handbook calculation for the GPS-to-UTC offset,” in line with an organization spokesperson, chatting with The Register.
Principally, UTC, or Coordinated Common Time, which we use on Earth truly differs a number of seconds from GPS time, which is utilized by satellites, so there’s all the time a small offset between the 2 time measurements.
It’s subsequently essential that satellite tv for pc producers account for this distinction normally, in an effort to be certain that all spacecraft capabilities and floor communications applications proceed easily — however throughout a intercalary year, the additional day in February means engineers should add one other layer of adjustment time-wise. If not, as Eutelsat’s expertise reveals, issues can happen.
“The foundation trigger was recognized as a software program challenge inside the floor section,” the corporate mentioned in a brief assertion. “Eutelsat was totally mobilized and labored with the seller to revive full service.”
Based mostly in Paris, Eutelsat runs one of many largest satellite tv for pc networks on the planet, together with 35 geostationary satellites and a constellation of over 600 satellites in low Earth orbit. Except for public web, Eutelsat additionally distributes connectivity for presidency companies and greater than 6,500 tv channels.
The origin of the intercalary year, which provides sooner or later—the twenty ninth—to the top of February as soon as each 4 years, dates all the best way again to 46 B.C. An astronomer named Sosigenes of Alexandria instructed Julius Caesar that the tropical yr (or the photo voltaic yr) lasted about 365.25 days. So, a leap day was added to the calendar each 4 years to account for the quarter day.
Each time a intercalary year comes round, there are all the time a number of errors that pop up around the globe. Final yr, a pc bug attributable to the existence of Feb. 29 turned off avenue lighting throughout Paris for an evening, which then needed to be restored district by district.
We now have some time till firms and organizations have to begin worrying about laptop points attributable to a intercalary year. Feb. 29 doesn’t come round once more till 2028.