Satellite runs out of fuel

A fuel feed problem with a thruster on the satellite Optus B1 is believed to have caused the outage that affected Sky TV subscribers throughout the country.

An estimated 550,000 households were left without satellite TV and radio services for 13 hours, after the signal to the satellite was lost during a routine positioning procedure.

Optus, which provides the satellite service for Sky, believes the most probable cause to be a fuel feed "anomaly" to one of the satellite's 14 thrusters.

Sky said customer accounts will be credited for the loss of a day's service. Advertisers were also expected to be refunded.

The satellite signal was restored at 8.05am yesterday and channels were progressively restored.

But the company had expected services to be restored just before midnight yesterday. The company had initially attributed the delay to the solar eclipse - a reason doubted by Wellington astronomer Brian Carter.

A Sky media release at 6am yesterday stated the eclipse had blocked sunlight to the solar cells on the satellite, requiring the cells to be recharged before signal realignment could continue.

An eclipse may have prevented recharging but "surely it would have back-up power", Mr Carter said, because the satellite would be in shadow for a good deal of time in the normal course of its orbit.

Sky spokesman Tony O'Brien said the information had come through the company's engineers.

New Zealanders were quick to poke fun at the situation. A fictitious auction of the B1 satellite was up on the Trade Me website within an hour-and-a-half of the service disruption on Thursday night.