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

well

[someone1234]

If they are spotted, they failed. I think they should thank the spotters for the free bugtesting.

Re:well

[morgan_greywolf]

Um, maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but if you have an object in low Earth orbit, it would seem to me that as long as there is line of sight to it, there's no way you can really hide it.

Re:well

[phil reed]

Black absorbs sunlight. The satellite would overheat.

Re:well

[Rogerborg]

Remove all blinking lights

You Goddamn surrenderniks make me sick. Get rid of the blinkenlights? Blinkenlights are the only thing that separates us from the animals (or the "Chinamen", as we're apparently supposed to call them these days). More blinkenlights! I want those things lit up like Xebusmass trees. I want the commies to look up and have our superior technology slap them in the face like the dangling genitalia of an angry neon God. More blinkenlights!

Re:well

[maxume]

If I did have a way to hide satellites, I would make damn sure that I had some satellites that weren't hidden, and I would publicly complain about the fact that people were tracking them.

Nothing like a little misdirection in the morning.

(That the Allies sent spotter planes out to get spotted by the enemy that they had located by intercepting and decrypting message traffic, and gave the enemy time to radio home that they had been spotted, is one of my favorite things, ever.)

Re:well

[Glock27]

So sans a Star-Trek-style Cloaking Device, it will always be detectable at some leve. So they might as well just make it look like some random satellite so there's always a question as to what kind it is.

It's worse than that. Visible light isn't the problem, it's self emission of long wave infrared (LWIR) radiation. The background of space is very cold (a few K above absolute zero), so anything with any significant temperature contrasts very nicely. In theory it might be possible to cool the front side of the (notionally black) satellite to near zero deg K, but in practice that'd take prohibitive energy, since that nice black surface would absorb a whole lot of solar energy when exposed (~1/2 the time).

So, civilian satellite spotters aren't the real problem, it's inimical militaries with LWIR telescopes...and there's pretty well nothing to be done about it.

Re:well

[ArcherB]

Black absorbs sunlight. The satellite would overheat. That's why you launch it at night... duh!

Seriously, you only need to paint the side that faces the earth, since that's where all the eyes are and the sun is not. You can "paint" the other side whatever color you want since there's not going to be anyone on the far side looking for it (for now anyway).

Re:well

[denmarkw00t]

Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.

Re:well

[gnick]

Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please. My speculation is that, if you were to refer to the average Chinese person as an "Asian-American", he would be confused at a minimum and possibly upset.

Re:well

[dotancohen]

Paint it black And how would the satellite dissipate all the heat that it would absorb? Arm chair spy-satellite engineering might be fun, but trust me, you are not going to come up with something so obvious such as "paint it black" that the _real_ engineers did not think of first.

Re:well

[j-turkey]

Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.

Walter, this is not a guy who built the railroads, here, this is a guy who spied on my satellites!

Re:well

[Eternauta3k]

I don't know what spy satellites look like A dot of light (even if you have a telescope)

Remove all blinking lights It's actually the reflection from the Sun that lets you see it (maybe the black paint could help, along with frying the satellite and rendering the solar panels useless (unless they have a RTG)).

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

[besalope]

It's more along the lines of looking for objects in unpublicized flight paths that gives away spy satellites. If you're looking where there should be nothing and there's a moving object, red flags go up real quick. Now if they made dual use satellites (e.g. Weather/Spy) and publicized the flight paths, that would hide them far better. Than painting it black or changing the exterior. After all, the best place to hide things is in plain sight.

Re:well

[Melbourne Pete]

Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.

I think you have to successfully invade China before you get to call them Asian-American.

Re:well

[porpnorber]

Then why are South Africans "African-American" and the English "Caucasian" (the Caucasus is the area immediately north of Iran, roughly centred on the incredibly historically important city of Tbilisi)? This offensive and demented nonsense is forced on you every time you apply for a job in the US. Of course middle-kingdom-men are Asian-Americans! And by the same logic the native people of Australia should probably be referred to as 'Cheese on Toast.'

Er, </sarcasm>, you understand.

Amazing how neatly political correctness and racism slot together....

Re:well

[Fjandr]

Maybe Egyptian immigrants WANT to be referred to as African-American.

Then there's always the hilarity that would ensue from an Anglo South African immigrant. Nothing like a white, British-accented person checking off the box "African-American" under race.

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.

Sorry, governments...

[TripMaster Monkey]

...but the sky is pretty much Public Domain. Or are you going to outlaw looking up?

Re:Sorry, governments...

[Smidge204]

1) Provide free, unlimited, high-speed internet access (and /. subscriptions) to all citizens.
2) People stop going outside.
3) Secrecy!

=Smidge=

Re:Sorry, governments...

[SydShamino]

My guess would be that the government, in the interests of national security, would simply ban discussion of the movements of heavenly bodies, as well as research on their movement patterns. We've already seen what happens when radicals start tracking heavenly bodies and make claims about their movement patterns and relationship to earth.

sarcasm

Combining forces?

[adnonsense]

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.

Just think what the Chinese government would be capable of if they were to stand in this guy's backyard with his binoculars!

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

[kaos07]

Seriously, two articles in the same day scaremongering about China. Slashdot is turning into The New York Times in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

If the Chinese can develop tiny robots good for them. If the Chinese can spot satellites, good for them. Why the summary decided to single out China, I don't know. I'm sure if a guy with binoculars can do it, so can just about every government in the world, including the United States government. Remember, you guys aren't the only with satellites up these days.

First of all we aren't all American here so we don't all quite understand this paranoia about the Chinese. Secondly, I highly doubt the average Slashdotter, who is generally well educated, has the kind of irrational paranoia that Slashdot seems to be provoking in these articles.

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.

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

[qoncept]

"I highly doubt the average Slashdotter, who is generally well educated, ..." I wish I had mod points so I could mark this post funny. People here, in general, are idiots like everywhere else. When I was in the Air Force people always used to be surprised when someone would do something stupid; they thought that since you had to score in the 40th percentile in the ASVAB test to get in the Air Force rather than the 30th as in the Navy, the people should be smarter.

Lay off the Chinese!

[Cathoderoytube]

Hey! Hold on! Hold on! Lay off the Chinese! I thought they were our friends I mean they ARE hosting the Olympics. Nobody who hosted the Olympics ever turned out to be bad. Am I right folks? Am I right?
So what if they can see all the satellites the Yanks ever launched? It's not like they'd be developing some means to shoot them down. It's pretty obvious they're working on a weather control machine at the moment.

GOOD!!

[krygny]

The people charged with our defense and national security are *supposed* to be uneasy, ...lay awake nights, ... constantly wonder if all they've done is enough. That way, the rest of us don't have to.

Many LEO satellites are visible to the naked eye, and certainly with only a little optical assistance. Spotting one and speculating what it's doing are two different things. But maybe it's time to employ a little stealth for satellites too.

Dupe

[mrxak]

Isn't this a dupe? I could've sworn there was an article about this just a week or two ago.

Re:Dupe

[pionzypher]

Modded flamebait? What the hell mods? He's right, this is a dupe of this store that was ran on the fifth.

Re:There's only so much to see...

[altinos.com]

That is, until clocking technology is invented, I suppose. When the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 1, then the satellite will be invisible!

They Already Know

[Anonymous Coward]

The US government isn't worried about China or vice versa. We both know where each other's satellites are; both public and "secret". You don't put two billion dollar objects in orbit on a potential crash course. It just doesn't happen. That's why they know, we know they know, they know we know they know, and we're all comfortable with that.

Next question?

WARNING:

[Ihlosi]

Do NOT look through binoculars at secret government laser satellite with remaining eye.

Re:Stealth Satellites?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Actually, we are, which neatly demolishes that argument.

I have a plan

[nsebban]

Let's just restrict the access to that guy's backyard, and forbid he let any chinese people use his binoculars.

Re:Why China?

[Scrameustache]

When did China become "The Enemy"? I thought you were still working on Al-Qaeda. Did I miss a memo? America has always been at war with China.
Good news about our increased chocolate rations, though!

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:There's only so much to see...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

According to the PBS special on the MOL project, the very first spy satellites had a resolution of 3 inches. That was in the 70's. I don't think they've gotten any worse over time.

What enemy??

[pembo13]

Is the whole rest of the world enemy to the US now?

GPS satellites are not geostationary

[jvonk]

The GPS constellation of 24 satellites are arranged in six different orbital planes, each inclined 55 degrees to the equator. To obtain exactly two orbits per day, the satellites are placed at an altitude of 20,200km. "Look Ma, I didn't even cite Wikipedia!"

You're out of your fucking mind

[Anonymous Coward]

you realize we, no joke, have more nukes in a single submarine than they do in their entire military.

LOL, where the hell did you get that "fact"? You do realise China's been nuclear-capable since the late '60s, right?

How many nukes China does or does not have is one of the world's most closely guarded secrets and frankly, unless you're some top level NSA operative, you have no fucking idea.

The *only* credible information about the Chinese nuclear arsenal was the HK leak which emerged in 1996, which indicated China had in excess of 2,300 warheads. Look it up. That was close to an order of magnitude above any prior western media report - I somehow doubt they have given up making them since then.

They have ICBMs easily capable of reaching anywhere in the US. Accuracy doesn't really matter with nukes. If you think 2,300 nuclear warheads - and that was over *10 years ago* - isn't a significant deterrent to the US, you're out of your god damn mind.

I do not claim to have any special knowledge but I do take an interest in geopolitics and have a few friends in (Australian) intelligence circles who would laugh in your face if you tried to claim the USA would automatically win in an all out war with China. They would say, and I'm inclined to agree, that the USA is more likely to automatically *lose* anything other than for-real "all out war" with China - by default - because the US government cannot take any action which leads to nuclear retaliation by China, but the Chinese Govt couldn't give a shit. You think the US is going to risk getting nuked to save Taiwan? LOL!

Dupe

[Fnord666]

If you would like to see the previous discussion of the exact same article published on the same day(although published through a slightly different outlet), please see the discussion here.

Free inquiry makes authoritarians uneasy

[dpbsmith]

Any sort of free intellectual activity, following what interests you to see where it leads, makes authoritarians uneasy. Bad governments seek to exercise power by restricting information. Anyone who's just naturally curious and follows their bliss for the sheer joy of finding things out represents a danger to authoritarians.

It's not just political speech that's dangerous, it's anything that seeks truth that might not always align with propaganda.

That's why the freedoms provided in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution are so precious.