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Skynet-1A was launched in 1969. Image Credit: NASA, Image ID: KSC-69P-0941 via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, Modified by IFLScience A military spacecraft launched 56 years ago was moved from its orbit – and nobody is quite sure who did it, or why. In 1969 the UK launched Skynet-1A, a military communications satellite placed in orbit above the east coast of Africa in order to relay information to British armed forces. It stopped working due to hardware issues around 18 months after it started operating, and the spacecraft was left to the laws of physics to orbit the Earth – it...

Someone moved the UK's oldest satellite and there appears to be no record of exactly who, when or why. Launched in 1969, just a few months after humans first set foot on the Moon, Skynet-1A was put high above Africa's east coast to relay communications for British forces. When the spacecraft ceased working a few years later, gravity might have been expected to pull it even further to the east, out over the Indian Ocean. But today, curiously, Skynet-1A is actually half a planet away, in a position 22,369 miles (36,000km) above the Americas. Orbital mechanics mean it's unlikely the...