US Claims Satellite Shoot-Down Success

Readers of Slashdot last valentines day will remember discussing US Plans to Shoot down a damaged spy satellite. An anonymous reader noted that the US is reporting success last night, thus saving us from hydrazine exposure. Of course this makes me wonder- if it's this easy, wouldn't an international super power war pretty much immediately mean the downing of every satellite in orbit?

Comments

Re:Wasn't that the whole point

[MightyYar]

Some problems with your argument:

The high temperatures from the satellite rentry would have boiled the hydrazine and caused fuel tank rupture LONG before the satellite hit the ground. I am not a rocket scientist and neither are you, but I have been told by a satellite guy that the hydrazine has to last for the entire duration of the satellite's mission, and so the tank is extremely well insulated. It may survive re-entry with at least some content. If you want to dig up another satellite guy with a contrary opinion, go right ahead. It's a moot point, though, since neither of us is going to find a guy willing to talk about this particular classified satellite.

To remind China we can do it, and we're so sure we can do it we have no problems being put on the spot about doing it. The system that they used is not an anti-satellite system... it is an anti-ballistic missile system that was quickly modified to handle this particular satellite. The missile does not have enough range to reach a stable orbit like the Chinese test. So while this was an impressive show of technology, it did not demonstrate any sort of anti-satellite system.

I contend that this was a 3-for: the US got to test it's anti-ballistic missile system, got to protect its secrets, AND got to reduce the risk to people. And for what? No risk whatsoever. If it missed - no change in situation. It hit, though, and so now everything will just burn up.

Re:Wasn't that the whole point

[firesyde424]

Weapon systems capable of shooting down a satellite is nothing new. The US and the USSR explored using nuclear tipped missles in the early 60's that could get close enough to a satellite to bring it down. Several countries experimented with high powered lasers as a method of disabling or destroying satellites. The Soviets experimented with so called "Killer Satellites" that would take out a target with the orbital equivalent of a giant shotgun. Since the mid to late 80's, the US Air Force has had an ASAT(Anti Satellite) missle called the ASM-135 that was fired from a F-16 at extreme altitude and would seek out and collide with its targets as opposed to exploding near them.

Now I personally did not know that we had a ship based missile capable of knocking down satellites but apparently we do. However, that is likely not an epiphany for any other country that is capable of fielding an ASAT weapon system. It's highly likely that several other countries were even informed of the planned launch to forestall any tensions that it might have created.

If we did give away any important information as a result of this launch, it's that our president is capable of making rationale decisions every once in a while. It's entirely possible that countries such as China and India were not aware of that.

This wasn't a sat-kill test

[jabber]

The fact that the missile used shot down a satellite does not mean that the purpose here was to see if we could shoot down a satellite. Look here...

The Chinese took out one of their telecomm birds last year. It was 500 miles up and in steady orbit. That was a sat-kill test.

The US spy satellite was a) 150 miles up, b) in unstable orbit and c) a spy sat.
Destroying the super-secret spy technology on the satellite was a bonus.
The shoot down was a test of whether US anti-ICBM systems worked as intended. THIS was the whole point. We've done contrived tests of the missile defense technology before, but here was an opportunity to shoot down a real, faster moving, unpredictably moving target.

Shooting down satellites in stable orbit isn't hard. The challenge is getting a missile up there, and the US has this technology locked. Shooting down a very fast moving object that is coming at you in a more or less unpredictable way is tough. The success of this test makes China and Russia nervous not about their satellites but about their ability to lob missiles.

As for all-our space-war, the challenge would be to be selective. The EMP from a small number of well placed nukes would fry the electronics of nearly every communication and weather satellite in space, not to mention taking the GPS system out of commission. Only a low-tech rogue nation with nuclear weapons, like N. Korea or Iran would in any way benefit from such tactics.