Sun may disrupt satellite’s TV broadcast for eight days

Television broadcasts of local channels could be disrupted for a total of 81 minutes from tomorrow to October 7 as the sun could be in direct line with Bangabandhu Satellite-1, disrupting the signal of the satellite.

The sun's radiation overwhelms a satellite's signal when it stays in direct line with a satellite, which is also called a sun outage.

In case of sun outage, the users could face broken pictures in all 39 local channels, which are airing programmes using Bangabandhu-1, the country's first communication satellite.

"The disruptions could occur for few minutes due to the sun outage," said Md Shafiqul Islam, general manager for technical, research and planning at the Bangladesh Satellite Company Limited (BSCL).

"However, the disruption will be limited. The viewer could see low quality pictures or vertical and horizontal artificial lines during the broadcast. All of the satellite in the world could face such problem at a certain period in a year."

In a notification issued today, the BSCL mentioned the possible period of the outage.

The BSCL expressed its regrets for this temporary problem caused by natural events.

The satellite was launched in May 2018 under a project of over Tk 2,765 crore, allowing Bangladesh to enter the space club of nations who have sent satellites into orbit.