Folks I have to tell you my spidey senses are a tinglin’.
First we’ll start with what you’re likely to hear or have already heard elsewhere. From the Boston Globe via WaPo:
The Chinese military used a ground-based missile to hit and destroy one of its aging satellites orbiting more than 500 miles in space last week — a high-stakes test demonstrating China’s ability to target regions of space that are home to US spy satellites and space-based missile defense systems.
The test of anti satellite technology is believed to be the first of its kind in two decades by any nation and raised concerns about the vulnerability of US satellites and a possible arms race in space.
The situation seems to be that this “test” or whatever it was, happened last Thursday on January 11. Absolutely nobody reported on it (in the press) except for an American magazine called Aviation Week and Space Technology.
Now, if this test were REAL, why in the world would the U.S. military either not be able to detect it (practically impossible) or not discuss this with the press? But we’ll get to that in a moment.
This is the reason why my spidey senses are tingling.
An anonymous American “National Security Council” person has supposedly confirmed the test. For sure a number of countries, including Australia and Canada etc., have lodged formal protests about this.
But is it really confirmed? Look at this, from a Russian news agency:
The Russian defense minister denied Friday allegations that China launched a ballistic missile January 11 that destroyed a satellite.
CNN, a U.S.-based global television network, earlier said that a U.S. National Security Council spokesman confirmed a report in the magazine American Aviation Week and Space Technology that China last week destroyed one of its old meteorological satellites with a medium-range ballistic missile.
“I have heard such rather unsubstantiated reports, and I am afraid they are unfounded,” Sergei Ivanov said. “There is nothing to comment on. The rumors are largely exaggerated.”
So either the Russian defense minister doesn’t know what’s going on or has some reason to “cover this up”. I don’t believe that for a second. Russia and China aren’t exactly allies but I cannot imagine Ivanov (equivalent to position the American Robert Gates) would not be informed, one way or another, about the facts surrounding this test.
So has China itself confirmed the test? Not anonymous American government officials and amateur American magazines? Well I did a Google News search for the words missile, China and confirmed and all I could find at the moment is this:
China has launched its first ever anti- satellite missile to destroy an ageing weather satellite in space, a Chinese civil service official confirmed to Deutsche-Presse Agentur dpa on Friday.
The missile test – the first of its kind by any nation in two decades – was reportedly carried out on January 12 and has drawn strong criticism from Japan and the US, where media reports first revealed the test on Thursday.
The White House later confirmed the reports and said it had logged a formal complaint with China, while Canada and Australia have also protested.
“We are concerned about it, and we’ve made it known,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
The test that destroyed the Fengyun-1C weather satellite, 850 kilometres away, was carried out from a launching pad in Xichang in Sichuan province, a civil service official at the launch site told dpa by telephone, without giving any further reasons for the launch.
The official referred to China’s central military command in Beijing, who he said was behind the launch.
So an anonymous civil Chinese government spoke by telephone to a German news agency about a test conducted by the Chinese military. Meanwhile this has been denied by the Russian Defense Minister on the record but confirmed by the American White House.
Do I know what happened? No I sure don’t. I do know there are lots of people, and not just military, watching satellites in space. There’s a whole Linux-based community which runs an excellent program called “Predict” that I’m familiar with and what it does is predict and plot where satellites are.
And one thing some of those non-weather satellites are designed to do is monitor the launching of ballistic missiles. When I see this confirmed by the Chinese government (on record, someone with a name) I will start to understand what’s going on. Until then, please don’t be victim to the hype.
Just on the face of it, shooting a missile 500 miles to hit a target moving at a relative speed of thousands of miles an hour is practically impossible. We all need more information on this.
Pax
Just on the face of it, shooting a missile 500 miles to hit a target moving at a relative speed of thousands of miles an hour is practically impossible.
Orbit in approx. 105 minutes, some 40,000 km, so speed is 6.3 km per sec. Speed is not important with satellite interception, just accuracy to let satellite meet intercepting missile head on. Right? Trajectory of satellites is well defined and is not a prediction, but mathematical science. It’s useful for the Chinese to be able to ‘switch off’ those expensive and sophisticated spy satellites (made in U.S.A.).
Fengyun 1C – Orbit Data
Depending on orbital altitudes, angular velocities, and inclinations, polar orbiting satellites can be sun-synchronous, that is, they cross the equator southbound about 11 deg. westward (as Earth rotates underneath) with each trip around the world (about 105 minutes long), so that they cross some reference position (e.g., the equator) at the same local time. This time is usually between mid-morning and mid-afternoon on the sunlight side of the orbit.
Click on image: figure courtesy ofthe National Space Agency of Japan
Sunsynchronous satellites pass over any given latitude at almost the same local time during each orbital pass. Thus they image their swaths at about the same sun time during each pass, so that lighting remains roughly uniform. Of course the clouds change with each orbit, but their broad patterns and positions remain mostly unchanged in the short orbital periods involved. From this method, we can make a daily mosaic from the swaths, which is a good general summary of global weather patterns for that period.
While the US may be unhappy about China’s actions, the Washington administration has recently opposed international calls to end such tests.
It revised US space policy last October to state that Washington had the right to freedom of action in space, and the US is known to be researching such “satellite-killing” weapons itself.
… It may be that last week’s test is an attempt by China to push back at the US and put pressure on Washington to consider negotiating a treaty to ban weapons in space.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."on a satellite destruction system that is state of the art and no doubt doesnt work. Oh but we are totally bankrupt. Oh wait a moment maybe the Chinese will fund the system for us by buying a few more billion government bonds or something. Oh wait a moment then we will owe them so much that they wont need war weapons to take us over. They will own and control us already.
Welcome to the mad mad world.
But as already posted, it is possible.
It isn’t rocket science. Oops! I mean precisely it is rocket science–that hard, and no harder.
Decades ago, the Soviets launched teams of cosmonauts–in separate vehicles–in orbital “group flight.”
The US has already announced the intention to violate the spirit–and perhaps the letter–of existing treaties, and militarize space.
The Chinese might be saying: “Go ahead and try.” They might further be hinting that if we launch a war against Iran, they can take down our reconnaisance satelites right now.
Perhaps the Russians still have their old interception capability but don’t want to advertise it: Let the stupid Americans think they own space. Don’t tell them different until the time comes for it.
Yet it might be bogus–the US cooking up the excuses for their space military ventures that they already intend.
Interesting. More pieces moving on the game board. Does not bode well. We won’t be seeing much diplomacy from here on out.
This sort of thing wouldn’t be anything new, the US tested this capacity in the 1980s.
[blockquote]The ASM-135 ASAT was an anti-satellite weapon built by LTV Aerospace for the U.S. Air Force.
In response to a 1977 U.S. Air Force Space Systems Command Request for Proposal, LTV Aerospace began work on the three-stage ASM-135.[1] The first stage was derived from Boeing’s AGM-69 SRAM cruise missile, with the second and third stages provided by LTV.[1] The third stage featured a hydrazine attitude control system for the duration of the missile’s exoatmospheric flight. The ASM-135 featured a kinetic warhead instead of utilizing high explosives, as the missile’s momentum was sufficient to disable or destroy any anticipated target.[1]
The ASM-135 was successfully tested on September 13, 1985 against a research satellite, P78-1.[1] A modified F-15 Eagle was used as the launch platform. [blockquote]
It wouldn’t surprise me at all, especially since the US military is particularly vulnerable to anti-satellite warfare. Disrupting GPS and communications satellites would cut some of the US military’s main advantages.
lol, whoops, screwed up the quote tags there. Should have hit preview I guess…. 🙂
on so many levels.
One of the articles Oui links mentions the problem of space debris. It is probably quite easy to make selected portions of near-space into no-fly zones for satelites by launching counter-revolving trash.
Nobody currently has a reason to do this, but the US could easily change the incentives.