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US Satellites Dodging Chinese Missile Debris
GSGKT writes "Today's Washington Times runs a story about the increasing problem with space junk orbiting the earth. Debris from the anti-satellite missile test by the Chinese military last year threatens the integrity of more than 800 operating satellites, half of them belonging to the US. Two orbiting U.S. spacecraft were forced to change course to avoid being damaged soon after the incident. Air Force Brig. Gen. Ted Kresge, director of air, space and information operations at the Air Force Space Command in Colorado, estimates that
"essentially (Chinese anti-satellite tests) increase the amount of space debris orbiting the Earth by about 20 percent", and the debris might threaten spacecraft for up to 100 years."
On the other hand, it looks like the missiles really do work.
Half of the threatened satellites are American owned, not half of the debris.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I find the tag of sanctionthem rather odd as how, realistically, would one impose these sanctions? Economic sanctions would be met with retaliatory tariffs; Do not forget that economically, North America needs them more than they need us (i'm not sure of the situation for the rest of the world).
What's left, political pressure? Because of how much China listens to political pressure concerning their own policies? Military pressure?
I do not see it.
Ice Cream has no bones.
It's just their way of building the Great Spacewall of China.
Kind of makes US reliance on space based technological dominance in the theater of war into a bit of a joke, doesn't it. If some dumb nation were to weaponize space, this is how easily they and their efforts could be shut down. Kind of makes the whole idea seem really stupid.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
They don't have so many satellites in orbit but could be worried about all the spy satellites the USA has. So they blast one of their junkers into lots of little ballistic missiles that damage all satellites.
It doesn't hurt them so much but it definitely harms other countries.
Because our junk isn't the result of intentionally detonating explosives in space with the aim of developing technologies designed to disrupt communications, which is kinda the point of the story.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
...with all the debris already up there and the continual adding to it by the Chinese, we'll eventually find ourselves planet-locked with nowhere to go without having to run the gauntlet of bolt-sized particles travelling at 17000mph+. Someone's gonna have to go up there and sweep up while at the same time avoiding adding to the mess that's already there. Can you say Planetes?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Aw crap, somebody read the article :).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Send someone up with a really big vacuum cleaner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series)
'nuff said...
MrM
Karma? We don' need no steenkeeng karma!
Someone had to :p
North America does not *need* China in any sense of the word. That is a complete fallacy. We could cease all trade with China tomorrow and we would be perfectly fine. In fact, we'd probably be better off. Don't start in about all the "goods" we'd be missing. So what! We'd make 'em here. They'd be more expensive, but, that'd be a good thing. By the way, this WILL happen. As the oil reserves in the world dwindle, all nations will increasingly turn inward. Sorry to say it, but all the "international trade" and talk about "free trade" is economic voodoo! It's about to get UGLY! Real UGLY! Prepare for feudal times! By the way, this means the decline of human civilization and our inevitable extinction from this Galaxy. Free Trad, Schmree Trad. It won't matter one bit!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Anyone seen the anime Planetes? It's all about people working collecting debris in the future, because there is so much up there, that it is a risk to the (now common and commercial) space flights. Interesting that this is becoming a topic of interest as of late.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
They're afraid of Intel microprocessors? Damn, that's odd...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
RTFA.
According to the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the commercial communication satellite Orbcomm FM 36 maneuvered to avoid passing within about 123 feet of the debris field on April 6. A NASA Earth observation satellite Terra was moved June 22 to avoid coming within about 90 feet of the debris.
USA threatened by Chinese junk.
Oh, that it's now also in space? That's the news here, I guess?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You've seen enough Ninja movies haven't you?
Let them come. According to the RIAA we got way more than enough pirates to handle them. Yarr!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
China is just making sure that they are not able to be threatened by the US military complex without being able to stage a massive retaliation that would be unacceptable to the US.
After all the countries the US has invaded recently when they don't behave according to US wishes, any nation NOT preparing to defend themselves from the USA is being foolish. The US is seen as a bigger threat to world peace than any other nation right now, and it is only prudent to prepare to defend yourself.
Which would risk more debris in the atmosphere as the Chinese target every American spy satellite they find to erase the American technical advantage to one of pure numbers where the Chinese have the advantage.
The US military is completely dependant on their technology and the rest of the world knows it. Do their cruise missiles even work without GPS?
Any war by the US against a significantly developed nation runs the risk of rendering space completely useless for the next century. Think about the collateral damage from such a war taking out weather/TV/communications on top of the GPS which would almost certainly be targeted on purpose. The economic damage from that stupidity would be huge.
Letting the Americans know that was most likely a major reason behind the missile test in the first place and it's also why the Americans won't retaliate.
This is probably the best "Denial" type weapon developed. In the case of the chinese, if there was ever a major threat to thier sovereignty they could make the whole orbit plane into a huge denial zone, crippling the more advanced nation that relies on that area, while giving themselves the advatage of using an army that hasn't learned to rely on satellites. the whole mentality of "if we can't have it, neither can you" works very well in warfare. Scorched earth... just taken to the next level.
more like asteroids, and the shooting just leads to more and more smaller bits.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
And I'm going to go out a limb here, and assume you didn't read the article.
Of course, you could be using the Chinese definition of espionage, which is rather broad. Shame on you.
The US shot down a satellite in 1985 that was at an altitude of about 555KM. The pieces decayed from orbit pretty quickly.
I would like to see a complete ban on anti-satellite technology that results in there being any debris.
The Chinese test was pretty irresponsible and they could have proven that they have the capabilities through other means. The US test was in direct response to the USSRs test. One of the last cold war cock waving events.
That said, after Bush's little speech; which certainly implied that the US was allowed to go after satellites but would be upset if anyone else did it, I do understand why the Chinese did the test.
A couple more events like these and you can kiss your cell phone/GPS/non-local TV good by. OTOH. we would have a lot of shooting stars for a few dozen years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"The US military is completely dependant on their technology and the rest of the world knows it. Do their cruise missiles even work without GPS?"
The US has no weapon systems that are GPS guided and never has, precisely because it is vulnerable. The Chinese may have just now gotten around to developing anti-satellite technology, but the Soviet Union had it ages ago.
The core guidance package of US weapon systems is extremely high precision inertial navigation (all systems described as "GPS-guided" are actually inertial -- the media is a bit stupid about these things, as GPS is an optional untrusted overlay on inertial navigation systems). Some intelligent terrain following weapons also use optical geo-referencing. As a matter of policy going back to the Soviet Union days, the US military machine views satellite systems as "nice to have" but its infrastructure is pervasively designed to operate under the presumption that there are no satellites in orbit. The vulnerability of the US military to massive system outages is greatly overstated; the Soviet Union was a much bigger threat on this scale than the Chinese are, and the US military has always been pretty religious about designing systems whose functionality was robust and in the face of rapidly degrading military infrastructure and relatively decentralized. It is easy to forget it, but the Chinese have nothing on the old Soviet Union in terms of technology and force numbers, and that was the doctrinal enemy of much of the modern US military.
Does point out a problem with space warfare though. With current technologies or anything resembling them, there's only going to be one battle and a short one at that. After a few dozen satellite destructions, there will likely be so much junk in orbit that near earth satellite lifetimes will be measured in weeks and manned spaceflight will be ill advised for decades or maybe centuries.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Yeah, many great statements have always followed that opening.
Consider that GPS, when functional, is used to seed initial starting positions, but inertial nav packs are used to provide guidance. Other back up systems include other inertial nav packs, stationary fixes, and celestial navigation.
Consider that the GPS system can be knocked out. But, it's pretty damned hard to change the known locations of fixed locations, its damn near impossible to block good old centuries proved navigation by heavenly objects (unless the Chinese have an unknown deal with Klingons and Vogons) and with modern time keeping and the ability to shoot the stars with computer, it is surprising accurate.
Had you involved yourself at all with your country's military, beyond letting the press inform you, you'd have never made this mistake.
But, you can go on with your, "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious."
Pullllease, "I heard that..."
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Yes, I do realize that RIGHT NOW we don't have, and can't recreate the lifting capacity we had way-back-when. That is essentially what I was lamenting.
The only thing to NASAs credit today is JPL and the robotic missions. Those don't totally suck.
However, I don't think we can do it 100 years from now, given that we've gone essentially nowhere for the past 40.
Bizarro am happy.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
I wonder if there's any chance of starting an orbit cleaning service.
"Will clear a path x miles out for n passes for $$$."
I suppose getting clearance might be difficult, since any vehicle that has the capability of maintaining a precise orbit while collecting/colliding with space junk would probably be a great platform for cleaning up other items as well.
...called Planetes in which the main characters are space junkers, people who's job is to either destroy or salvage pieces of junk floating around in space because there's so much of it now that it threatens satellites in orbit.
And when the US did their anti-satellite tests previously, it was different how? I refer you to October 13, 1985.
"In April 1988, the two Democratic chambers of Congress voted against extending the ASAT ban"
"The ban on using the MIRACL laser against space targets lapsed in 1996, when the new Republican Congress opted not to renew it."
"in August 2004 the U.S. Air Force published a doctrine on "Counterspace Operations" which affirmed its readiness to conduct "operations to deceive, disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy adversary space capabilities" in order to maintain U.S. space superiority."
"*cough*JDAM*cough*Tomahawk*cough*F-16*cough*
Sorry got something stupid stuck in my throat. Anyways as I was saying the US has plenty of weapons sytems that use GPS systems and would either become completely ineffective or seriously crippled without it."
As was pointed out elsewhere, neither JDAMs nor Tomahawks (nor F16s for that matter) use GPS guidance -- only technically ignorant tools claim that any US weapon systems use GPS guidance. Even rudimentary research shows that systems like JDAMs and Tomahawk get their navigation data from ultra-precise laser ring interferometers (an extremely precise solid-state optical accelerometer with a purpose similar to mechanical gyroscopes), with the ability to optionally accept GPS fine-tuning corrections. The precision of the inertial systems is classified, but it is generally known that it is apparently not much worse than the GPS corrected version for weapon targeting purposes (they may have already converged for all we know -- INS has been continuously improved, and it wasn't bad to start with). Note that this is also why jamming or toying with the GPS signal does not send bombs and such flying way off course; the inertial system only accepts corrections within the computed error bars of its own positioning data. If the GPS signal is outside those bars, the navigation system assumes the GPS has been compromised.
I just gotta love the armchair weapon designers who think that of the thousands of bright engineers that built all these weapons, it never occurred to anyone that someone might jam or disable the weak RF signal that is GPS. GPS is a convenience, not a necessity, and it would only have small impact on the efficacy of American weaponry -- by design. The reason the US military embeds inertial navigation in everything is precisely because it is essentially impervious to countermeasures short of altering the physics of the universe. For all we know, nominal GPS weapon targeting is largely for show and indirection, since it costs next to nothing to strap a GPS receiver on an inertial navigation system (and it would seem to have worked in that case, considering how much breathless idiocy is fixated on GPS weapon targeting).
As a point of trivia, the laser inertial navigation systems used by the US military were invented in the 1960s for some (failed) ballistic missile interceptor research. Even though the ABM research was a dead end, the laser ring gyro technology developed for the project paid dividends for the US military way out of proportion to the money expended on the ABM research.
- communication satellites (all Command and Control over distances longer than say 20-80 Km; both voice and data).
- reconnaissance satellites (radar reconnaissance satellites, photo reconnaissance satellites, infra-red imaging satellites)
As far as I am aware, most of the emerging "networked" aspects of the military depend on satellite communications. The control of and imagery from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and all those automated little messages that collect information from many sensors to where it's combined, analysed, interpreted, and redistributed as terms of a coherent picture of what's where, down to the target coordinates. I believe that we saw both in Kosovo and in the Iraq war how extremely powerful those systems are.
In other words: if someone can destroy those satellites, the US military will -at a stroke- loose its single largest unmatched advantage. So one might imagine that there is some reason for concern.