Publicly available data suggests that a Russian inspector satellite has shifted its position in orbit to bring it relatively close to a U.S. KH-11 spy satellite. Russia has a number of what it calls "space apparatus inspectors" in orbit, which the U.S. government and others warn the Kremlin could use to gather intelligence on other satellites or function as "killer satellites," using various means to damage, disable, or destroy those targets.
The National Reconnaissance Office released Oct. 22 a trove of declassified records —including this silent video and photos below — from the 1960s about a military human spaceflight program.
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) would have sent military astronauts to a small space station.
The cover story of MOL was that the U.S. Air Force was testing the “military usefulness” of humans into space, but the real purpose of the program was to operate a reconnaissance satellite for the NRO.
President Nixon cancelled the program in June 1969, before its first flight, because of its increasing costs and the improved performance of unmanned reconnaissance satellites.
A mysterious Russian satellite that squeezed next to two Intelsat satellites and alarmed company executives has an “extremely small” chance of a collision, a Russian space expert told state-run media.
Ivan Moiseyev, the head of Russia’s Space Policy Institute, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti in an Oct. 20 story that “the possibility of a collision or some kind of interference is extremely small.”
The Russian satellite, alternatively known as Luch or Olymp, launched in September 2014 and seven months later moved to a position directly between the Intelsat 7 and Intelsat 901 satellites, which are located within half a degree of one another in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator.
In late September, the satellite moved again, according to an analysis published Oct. 5 by Brian Weeden, technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation.
The satellite has now settled at 24.4 degrees west longitude, right next to the Intelsat 905 satellite at 24.5 degrees west, according to information available on the space tracking website n2yo.com, which republishes U.S. Defense Department data.
Moiseyev said the Luch “is simply a relay satellite, sending signals from spacecraft to Earth, for example from the International Space Station — we have communications problems there — and from one satellite to another.”
“In no way can it be an ‘aggressor,’” he told the state news agency. “Any satellite can make some clumsy maneuvers, but collisions are extremely rare.”
The statements appear to be the first comments from Russia about the satellite. The Space Policy Institute, also known as ICP, was established by the Russian space agency and other government agencies in 1993 as an independent and nonprofit research organization.
A mysterious Russian military satellite parked itself between two Intelsat satellites in geosynchronous orbit for five months this year, alarming company executives and leading to classified meetings among U.S. government officials.
The Russian satellite, alternatively known as Luch or Olymp, launched in September 2014 and seven months later moved to a position directly between the Intelsat 7 and Intelsat 901 satellites, which are located within half a degree of one another 36,000 kilometers above the equator. At times, the Russian satellite maneuvered to about 10 kilometers of the Intelsat space vehicles, sources said, a distance so close that company leaders believed their satellites could be at risk.
The satellite’s movements were highlighted by Brian Weeden, technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation, in an Oct. 5 analysis of Russian rendezvous and proximity operations for SpaceNews’ sister publication, the Space Review.
“This is not normal behavior and we’re concerned,” Kay Sears, president of Intelsat General, the government services arm of Intelsat, said in an Oct. 8 interview with SpaceNews. “We absolutely need responsible operators. Space is a domain that has to be protected.”
Commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, Gen. John Hyten, revealed that the two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites in orbit have started taking photos of other satellites operating in geosynchronous orbit.
China’s military is getting its ducks in a row for what many experts see as a realistic competence at destroying US aircraft carriers during a confrontation scenario over Taiwan.
In a recent issue of the Chinese-language state-run China Youth Daily newspaper, a report claims that the Gaofen-4 geostationary earth observation satellite will be launched by the end of this year with the express purpose of hunting US aircraft carriers. The satellite is equipped with a visible light imager at 50 meters and infrared staring optical imager at 400 meters.
It was June 1969 and a senior official with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL, program was testifying behind closed doors in front of a congressional committee. He was explaining the value of MOL to a supportive audience that was glad to see the nation starting up another major human spaceflight program at the same time that Apollo was heading down. The speaker was talking when somebody handed him a note. He then informed the committee that he had just learned that President Nixon had canceled the MOL program. The room erupted in protest.
But the decision was made: MOL was dead.
he U.S. Air Force is planning to launch two new and previously classified space situational awareness satellites into geosynchronous orbit this year, according to Gen. William Shelton, who leads Air Force Space Command.
The spacecraft were developed covertly by the Air Force and Orbital Sciences under the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSAP), according to service officials.
The first two spacecraft will be boosted this year with two more to follow in 2016 to prevent a gap in surveillance on activities in the geosynchronous belt, Shelton said at the annual Air Force Association Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando. This is where commercial satellite communications are based, as well as critical national security assets such as the Space-Based Infrared System (Sbirs) early missile warning system and Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) constellation designed to provide jam-proof communications for the president even during a nuclear event.
“One cheap shot” against Sbirs or AEHF would be “devastating” to the Pentagon’s capabilities, Shelton said of a potential anti-satellite attack.
The two GSAP satellites will “drift” above and below the GEO belt, using electro-optical sensors to collect information on satellites and other objects in that region, Shelton said. They will be maneuverable, allowing them to be “tasked,” much like reconnaissance aircraft, to collect intelligence on specific targets, he said. The satellites will provide “accurate tracking and characterization” of satellites, according to an Air Force fact sheet released after Shelton’s speech here.
The very fact that the Air Force has developed and is deploying such a capability underscores concerns from government officials about the vulnerability of satellites that have become interwoven in government operations at all levels. The GPS constellation is already easily jammable because its signal is relatively weak, but officials worry about more widespread jamming as well as kinetic attacks.
National-security space programs have become so slow and costly that the U.S. faces the “self-inflicted surprise” of other nations being able to put capabilities into orbit much faster, says the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) director.
Formed in 1958 to prevent a repeat of the “technological surprise” of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite launch, the Pentagon agency has embarked on a group of projects intended to make access to space quicker and cheaper. It is an effort to counter what Darpa Director Arati Prabhakar sees as a troubling development “to do with how slow and costly it is for us to do anything we need to do on orbit for national security purposes.”
The projects involve lower-cost, more-responsive launch systems for smaller satellites; building blocks that allow spacecraft to be produced more rapidly and cheaply; robotic technology to assemble, upgrade or repurpose satellites in orbit; and sensors to see and control what is going on in space.
Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' SciTech 2014 conference here last week, Prabhakar said that as commercial and foreign space activity increases, the U.S. is “freezing in place . . . in terms of our ability to react and do what we need to do quickly, cost-effectively in space.” This is putting at risk the precise, lethal warfare capability “that is a core element of our national security today . . . [but is] simply not possible without the assets we have in space,” she says.
When astronomer Alan Dressler was invited to see what might be the future of NASA’s astrophysics programme, he had to leave his mobile phone behind, lest he be tempted to grab a quick snapshot. As he and a dozen others passed through the ITT Exelis facility in Rochester, New York, a guide held up a flashing red light, to warn working Exelis engineers to seal their lips in front of people without security clearance.
Their destination was the cavernous clean area of Building 1230, where two 2.4-metre telescopes, each as big as the Hubble Space Telescope and never flown, rested on low pedestals. “It seemed almost too good be true,” says Dressler, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. “Things like this just don’t drop on your doorstep.”
The unexpected gift comes from the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a secretive surveillance agency that built the telescopes to peer down on Earth. In June, NASA revealed that the NRO had bequeathed the scopes to the space agency because they were no longer needed. Now NASA has to figure out what it will do with them — and whether it can afford the cost of kitting them out with instruments and sending them into orbit.
This month, NASA plans to announce a science-definition team that will embark on that assessment. The team will report by April 2013 to NASA administrator Charles Bolden on the pros, cons and costs of adapting one of the telescopes for a mission to investigate dark energy, the phenomenon thought to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. But astronomers are already encouraged. As the veil of secrecy surrounding the telescopes lifts, astronomers are beginning to size up the devices’ capabilities. And so far, they are liking what they see — so much so that they are now talking about tacking on an instrument that would detect extrasolar planets directly. “I think the enthusiasm has only increased as time has gone on,” says Dressler.
