Satellite Spotters Make Government Uneasy

An anonymous reader found an interesting little story about satellite spotters and how, not surprisingly, their painstakingly methodical hobby doesn't exactly make gazillion dollar government agencies all that excited. Of course the article raises the very obvious point that if a guy with a pair of binoculars in his back yard can spot a satellite, so can the Chinese government.

Comments

Re:What's this new obsession with the Chinese...

[Gyga]

Why Americans are uneasy about China: China owns American hand, foot, and soul. China is not a democracy. China has blatant censorship and other policies that Americans hate. Americans like pretending such policies don't exist here. China is one of the few contries that have a military that can take ours and who is not a trustworthy friend.

China is not the issue.

[donscarletti]

"If Ted can track all these satellites," Pike said, "so can the Chinese."

Of course the Chinese can track these satellites, the Chinese have a multi-trillion dollar economy. With that you can afford the education, staff and equipment to track satellites with far more accuracy than these hobbyists since they can use things like Radar and large telescopes. The Chinese got these things by being a stable and peaceful (albeit repressive) state. The Chinese know where the satellites but they're not the ones who anyone's worried about. Smaller groups such as certain terrorist organisations possibly do not have the organisation or patience to find out this information themselves, but they do have the ability to look up web pages.

Despite their benign intentions, there are consequences for exposing any information of this nature. Information has always been one of the most important weapons in any human conflicts. Whether you believe you have a nationalistic duty to protect the secrets of your nation and its allies or not, one must consider that by publishing data of this nature, despite it just being numbers one can calculate in one's backyard can result in bad things happening to good people. One must consider that just because one is fairly safe from terrorism in most of the developed world, it is a way of life in Northern India, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq where it claims life on a steady basis, if public satellite data prevents the governments of these regions from suppressing those who attack civilians, then those deaths are a consequence of the publishing of the information. This isn't about protection of the revenue model of some fat record labels, this isn't about exposing government lies or software patents. This is information who's revelation could lead to death and it should be treated with serious discretion.

Re:well

[KublaiKhan]

Or build it into an upper stage for a legit satellite, such that it enters into an 'effective' orbit after putting the legit satellite where it needs to be.

You get two satellites up there for the price of one, in essence, while disguising that one of 'em -is- a satellite, rather than just another discarded upper stage of a rocket.

There are several advantages of this method of doing things:

Number 1, you don't have to hide that it's up there at all. You can have everyone looking at it, but unless they spot the camera aperture, they're not likely to guess that it's being used for anything at all.

Number 2, because you don't have to worry about hiding it, you've got a bit more elbowroom--you don't have to fit it into a tiny form factor, or worry too much about hardening the electronics against excessive heat buildup. Wrap the thing in gold foil if you like, as nobody's going to see it inside the booster's skin. If you're clever, you can run the antenna out one of the ends without anything being too obvious.

Number 3, the cost of putting it up is lessened, because the company that's buying the shot will not necessarily even know that there's a hanger-on sitting below their TV satellite or whatnot.

Number 3b, because of the reduced cost, you can put more of 'em up and get better coverage.

Number 4, not only will the booster help hide the satellite from prying eyes visually, it will also hide it on infrared wavelengths--because of course the booster will be a bit warm; it's got a lot of mass and a fairly large size to pick up radiation with during the day.

Sure, there are some drawbacks--it may require some work to fit the components in around existing fuel tanks and the like--but it's doable, it's doable with today's technology, it's doable for less money than many other solutions, and, frankly, given my track record for ingenious ideas, it's probably already being done by at least three governments.

Re:well

[plover]

There's a huge problem with this idea. To be effective, spy satellites have to be aimed. They don't just hover over interesting parts of the world, they orbit the globe while the earth spins beneath them. And interesting parts of the world don't magically appear beneath their tracks. To aim them means to change their orbit so they fly over the parts that you currently find interesting.

Rocket boosters are mostly uninteresting because they do not have to be aimed -- they are transferred once to a parking orbit, and there they stay until decay drops them back to earth.

But if a rocket booster were to change orbits more than twice, it would suddenly become a very interesting rocket booster.

Other than a handful of satellites with wide public visibility, payloads are not identified. Amateurs label them as they spot them, but civilians don't know for sure if satellite USA-193 is a spy satellite, military satellite, or whatever. The only thing the spotters know is that if a satellite changes orbits, someone on the ground surely cares about it. Yes, if something is dumped into a parking orbit and never changes, it will likely be ignored. But a never changing spy satellite isn't going to see much of the world, and will be pretty useless to its masters.