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Call In the Military To Blast Rogue Satellite?
coondoggie submitted a follow-up to the tale of the wandering satellite that might collide with other stuff in orbit. He asks "Will the military need to be called in to blow up the rogue Intelsat satellite meandering through Earth's orbit? Or maybe a NASA Space Shuttle could swing by and grab it? You may recall that in 2008, rather than risk that a large piece of a failing spy satellite would fall on populated areas, the government blasted it out of the sky. The physics of such a shot were complicated and the Navy had a less than 10-second window to hit the satellite as it passed over its ships in the Pacific Ocean. But it worked. Now word comes that a five-year-old Intelsat TV satellite is meandering in orbit and attempts to control it have proven futile. At issue now is that the satellite could smash into other satellites or ramble into other satellite orbits and abscond with their signals."
Well, I guess now at least we know what the launch of that secretive X-37B Air Force shuttle was for. So we should be safe, assuming that a PS3 update doesn't screw up its aiming system.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Call In the Military To Blast Rogue Satellite?
Look at it this way, they've already demonstrated to the rest of the world that their toys can knock your toys out of the sky. And that is the unquestioned belief right now which is why China had to run a similar test ... er "emergency to save other satellites." Why jeopardize your status as anti-satellite super power to actually do something positive?
My work here is dung.
As was clearly stated the last time we had this exact discussion:
- far too high for the space shuttle
- most assuredly too high for most anti-sat missiles
Doesn't come anywhere close to geosynchronous orbit (22,000 miles high)
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Stuff does not deorbit like a syfy movie.
I would think the tightly contained 1 big bit of a satellite is much safer than the thousands of little tiny parts in all sorts of orbits you are going to get if you try and destroy the one big bit.
How much will it cost us now to blow up the satellite and avoid collisions? How much will it cost us later when we have to clean up all of this damn space debris and avoid collisions? How is it that we managed to create such a large market for putting things into space, and yet have such a lack of the means to take things back down?
It's no bigger than a womp rat.
Isn't the "rogue" satellite in GEO? Although probabily there's ready ways to intercept something in a lower orbit would it be possible to do it in GEO?
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
With "privatize the space industry" all in vogue these days, the government should issue Satellite Hunting Licenses to private companies, with $$$ prizes for taking it out.
Let the private sector nail that varmint!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The part about the shuttle is obviously a joke, right? It can barely make it to the LEO, it is not able to reach a very highly located geosynchronous orbit. + why would you want to risk the lives of the crew and send a completely crazy unscheduled mission? And for some cheapo (in space terms) comms satellite? If they will send anything, it will be an unmanned mission, but even this is unlikely.
The US doesn't appear to have a system capable of destroying something at that orbit.
Now the first paragraph in the article is just full of ignorance.
"Will the military need to be called in to blow up the rogue Intelsat satellite meandering through Earth's orbit? Or maybe a NASA Space Shuttle could swing by and grab it?"
Again, the military hasn't demonstrated the ability to hit things in that orbit. The Shuttle can't go that high.
The F-15 launched ASM-135 ASAT - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT - could go up to 350 miles.
USA-193 was destroyed at 130 miles
Galaxy 15 is at 22,230 miles
The wayward satellite is in (or near) geosychronous orbit (23+K miles up). The shuttle cannot
reach that orbit, being limited to a couple of hundred miles altitude. Similarly, the anti-satellite
weapons are only designed for low orbit satellites (spy satellites and other military targets).
Now, if we had ever gone ahead and build the interorbit taxi/transport as an adjunct to
the space station (either robotic or manned), we would have a solution to the problem.
Right now we are stuck.
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
You should know that the Space Shuttle can't make it anywhere near geosynchronous orbit.
When China does it, the world protests. all the space junk created. However, when the US does it, it's to save other satellites.
This article comes from the blog of Michael Cooney @ Layer 8. He's not the mouthpiece of the US government.
When China does it, the world protests. all the space junk created. However, when the US does it, it's to save other satellites
Good god, man, cable TV signals are at steak here!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
All the attempts at humorous responses aside, The Shuttle pickups, Chinese blowups, X37B, and all previously announced intercepts were in low earth orbit - 100s of miles up. This satellite is 23,500 miles up...
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
Long answer? No. And this is why.
This satellite is in geosynchronous orbit. A shuttle mission is not an option, the orbit is to high. Retasking an ICBM or other missile to intercept is not an option, the orbit is to high.
Lasers could be an option, if one existed with the right power and accuracy. This thing is thousands of miles farther than any destructive laser has ever been targeted. Then you have to deal with not just a meandering satellite but possibly a cloud of debris capable of knocking out other satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
Blowing up a satellite in orbit seems like a great way to solve the orbital debris problem to me.
What if everyone on earth pointed their laser pointers at it at the same time? It would have at least as good a chance as sending the space shuttle.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
When China does it, the world protests. all the space junk created. However, when the US does it, it's to save other satellites.
The US did it before China and people were very critical:
The official explanation – that the US wanted to prevent the toxic contents of the spacecraft's fuel tank from hitting the ground – seems a bit thin, according to James Lewis, director of the technology and public policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thus critics from around the world have speculated about ulterior motives, ranging from a desire to test US ballistic missile defenses to poking China in the eye.
It's a sort of anti-satellite arms race and status thing between two super power. Or in playground terms, the two assholes are having a dick measuring contest.
My work here is dung.
Blowing it up would create a huge cloud of debris...very bad.
It's in geostationary orbit (~22000 miles), so it's way beyond the shuttle altitude.
Maybe somebody could develop a small space "tug" that could be launched to intercept it, and gently push it out of the way?
Probably a lot harder to actually do than to speculate about, and it would probably take years, and cost millions.
So...no easy answers.
The satellite in question is at geosync altitudes, something like 23,000 miles. I think the space shuttle has a maximum orbit at something like 300 miles. And even if you blew it to bits, what do you do about all the pieces that will be floating around for the next hundred years or so? Best option for now is to let it drift out of control until the solar cells no longer can let the machine charge and then it goes dead. Maybe in 10 years when China is the new world superpower they can clean it up.
When I first heard about this a few days back, the article said that a satellite in geosynchronus orbit will eventually drift into the one of the earth-sun lagrange points and sit there ad infinitum
... nuke it!
If they are concerned about this satellite hitting other satellites, it would seem that traffic up there is getting pretty high. We know that of course there are varying reasons for launching satellites and some launches are done with little information shared on their purpose or location.
Nonetheless, is there an agency anywhere that has a good estimate of how many satellites are up there, where they are, and in which direction they are travelling? Is it something that NASA and others would start to pay more attention to when/if they start going for moon/mars/other-far-away-places missions?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Well, the two shots were Apples and Oranges.
USA-193 was in a decaying orbit at 130 miles and most of the debris de orbited within a couple weeks. It was hit by a small SM-3 surface to air missile, 21 feet long, 3,000 pounds
FY-1C was in a stable polar orbit at 537 miles and it's destruction increased the amount of space debris by 12%. The missile that hit it was a DF-21, 35 feet long, 30,000 pounds
Blowing it up in the area of geo-stationary orbit would be the most stupid thing to do.
"Have a nice new dark-age!"
We need a crash course:
make a probe with arms and an engine to get sent up, grab onto it, and take it down into the drink.
Yeah, harvesting this stuff would be better, but that ain't gonna happen.
Sure, you could have it bring dead sats to a landing vehicle to do reclamation,
but old owners who had written them off as dead would bitch for their bit,
and add in astro-preservationists... "it's a bit of space history, it HAS to stay up there".
(OK, for some early sats, fine; most of what's gone up in the last 30-40 years, probably not).
-- "...nuke the entire [satellite] from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Apologies to Ripley.
We need a maneuverable satellite dedicated to cleaning up our garbage. It could find a wayward satellite or piece of space debris and push it down into the atmosphere to burn up at a safe time and place. Call it a space bulldozer.
Any nation that has put up more than a token number of satellites should take the responsible action and put up a bulldozer satellite. They can then go around and work on slowly cleaning up their messes. Space is littered with an incredible amount of junk, and it would benefit everyone to clear it up.
We make messes on Earth and they tend to get cleaned up (at least in most first world countries). Why should outer space be any different? Just like on Earth, the mess doesn't go away on it's own and inevitably being ignored just makes the problems get worse and worse.
Certainly in the long run this would be cheaper than dedicated rocket launches to get just one thing at a time and would create less debris than simply blowing it up.
Okay I'm not an expert on how they get satellites up to geosynchronous orbit, but it seems to me the most expedient way would be to re-purpose what ever delivery system they use to get the things up there in the first place.
The amount of debris generated would further 'pollute' the orbit around earth....
Please help metamoderate.
http://www.mylocalinstaller.com/diagra2.jpg
It's the closest thing I can find. But....that's a lot.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
The US tests during the Cold War? Or the more recent US test that used no explosives and did not create any space junk*?
* Rather, the satellite was so low that the "junk" immediately de-orbited and burned up.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Good god, man, cable TV signals are at steak here!
Let's not limit ourselves just to worrying about Food Network. Don't be a chicken, there's a whole world of television programming.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
When did uninformed bloggers become news for nerds? Was there a memo that I missed?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Thanks. I came here to ask whether this didn’t just increase the space debris and your comment pretty well answered my question.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
consider also it takes months to put up a shuttle launch, and there are only two or three left in the history of the system.
and consider that any method of blasting the errant satellite makes zillions of smaller, faster, deadlier satellites to puncture and kill the rest of that orbital window.
what we desperately need is a space janitor to creep along orbits and trap all the errant bolts, paint chips, and snattered rocket nacelles from all the decrepit crap floating about, endangering the space systems we have.
nobody's working on it.
we will lose a LOT of technology because of it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I believe NORAD keeps track of most satellites and junk in orbit.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
ok, other already pointed that the shuttle and military interceptors can't reach geosychronous orbit, but about satelites that are already there ?
isn't there any old, almost decomissioned satelite near that orbit that is:
a) still under control from ground station
b) with fuel enough to manouver to galaxy 15's orbit ?
it doesn, t need to be a big impact, just a slow relative speed collision to nudge G15 to either deorbit it or send it to a lagrange point.
What ? Me, worry ?
May I suggest the ASM-135 ASAT. We did spend $5.3 billion dollars (1986 dollars no less) on it so might as well use them all up now.
In case you don't remember, stuff traveling at orbital velocities is positively lethal to spacecraft. The extreme energies involved in these kinds of impacts is enough to send very high velocity fragments in all directions. Sure, some of it will de-orbit, but most will end up in fairly stable orbits that will EVENTUALLY intersect all the other satellites up there. So blowing up one rogue satellite makes one very annoying but eminently predictable problem into a thousand lethal and unpredictable problems.
Last February, a Russian satellite hit a commercial Iridium satellite, and the resulting debris cloud (estimated near 600 pieces in various orbits) has been a HUGE headache for everyone in similar orbital altitudes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123438921888374497.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29147679/
In 2008, the US got criticized around the world for blowing up a falling satellite because of the health threats of hydrazine if it landed in a populated area. Aside from complaints about military showboating, there were many scientists who complained about the resulting orbital debris; however, in reality it was a very low-altitude explosion and the debris cloud did de-orbit very quickly (unlike a geosynchronous orbit explosion, which would leave practically permanent debris due to the orbit well above any appreciable atmospheric drag).
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6712/is_35_237/ai_n29417848/
Read here for some details on the general problems with orbital debris.
http://illuminations.nctm.org/LessonDetail.aspx?id=L376
So no more helpful suggestions like this, please.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
"Will the military need to be called in to blow up the rogue Intelsat satellite meandering through Earth's orbit? Or maybe a NASA Space Shuttle could swing by and grab it?
What? The answer is no, and no.
First, this satellite is at geosynchronous orbit altitude. That is a hundred times higher than the altitude of the satellite that was downed by the ground-based missile. You can't reach it with that weapon, and you absolutely, certainly can't "grab it" with the space shuttle. No. Not even close. Not even close to close.
Also, note that the satellite that was downed was in very low orbit. The significance of that was that all the pieces of it were in very low orbit, and hence they decayed in the atmosphere within a very short time of its destruction. The very worst, stupidest possible thing ever to do would be to "blow up the rogue satellite," because debris from a blown-up satellite in geosynchronous orbit would not decay, but would stay in the geosynchronous orbit pretty much forever. This would be a very bad thing.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Buck-Henry has the plans already drawn up... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(TV_series) "...Quark is an American science fiction situation comedy starring Richard Benjamin ... May 7, 1977 (canceled in April 1978). Quark was created by Buck Henry, ...The show was set on the United Galaxies Sanitation Patrol Cruiser, an interstellar garbage scow operating out of United Galaxies Space Station Perma One in the year 2222. Adam Quark, the main character, works to clean up trash in space by collecting "space baggies"..."
> Satellite: Abscond
Can't abscond, bro!
As I understand it, the US just got lucky - they had no idea whether the shot would or would not create a huge junk cloud. And it didn't.
I didn't cite, got too busy at work.
My information came from Wiki out of ease, but all the talk about USA-193 was in the public at the time of the shot and there was a good documentary about it on SCIENCE here in the US.
Sounds like the pot roast calling the kettle stew past the sell-by date.
Infuriate left and right
The service ceiling of the ASM-135 ASAT is 135 miles.
The orbit of geosynchronous satellites is about 26,000 miles.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
How did this get published on NetworkWorld's site? As other comments have pointed out, this is a completely ridiculous idea on so many levels it's laughable. Yet TFA seems to be serious!
No sig? Sigh...
Why not just attach a long, weighted tether to it? Use a magnet to hold it on and the change in center of mass will pull put rotation on it, like a bolas. Once it is spinning around the new center of mass, you can disconnect the weight (by radio) and send it on a higher orbit. Then you only have two pieces of trash - one going out (the satallite), one coming in (the weight) and you can control the release time so that it comes in over the pacific. Then you only have one piece of trash headed away from the Earth.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
thanks to a treaty. People from the USA naturally assume it would be them that would blow it up. However, consider the noise that would be generated in the USA if Russia took on the task of blowing up the satellite.
If the satellite has to be blown up, it should not matter if it is Russia, China or the USA which does the work. It is non-military, after all.
http://xkcd.com/681_large/
In particular, look at the panel of Earth, which is under Uranus and Neptune, lower right.
Geez, XKCD should win the Pulitzer Prize for this graphic. If a picture is worth a KiloWord, this is worth a MegaWord of explanation. This should be required viewing in all 8th Grade science classes.
now is a good time to invent one.
all these naysaying party poopers in the comments here saying we can't do this, you ruin all the fun
all we need are michael bay, jerry bruckheimer, and bruce willis
maybe billy bob thornton, ben affleck, steve buscemi, and a russian peter stormare for wisecracking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon_(1998_film)
and since they are oil rig workers, maybe they can clean up the BP mess in the gulf of mexico too in their spare time
but noooo... you people and your geosynchronous orbits and your "physics", nothing but a bunch of negative whiners
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Real-time satellite tracking: http://www.n2yo.com/
Mmmm...steak....
It's going to interrupt my cable-tv service! blast it. Spend however many millions are necessary, as long as I won't miss the American Idol finale.
Not an off the shelf solution but .. A Delta IV is able to lift 6,275 kg to geosynchronous orbit. ..
A unfriendly payload could be delivered. Doing this in under a year would be a real challenge.
It would also be the most incredibly stupid thing to date as far as space debris issues.
GEO is a very special orbit that exists in one plane. Not a good place for random bits
Now if some bad guy living is a secret volcano with a white cat was to develop a launcher that would deliver, lets say 5 to 10 thousand kg of small bb’s into the GEO plane in ‘reverse’ orbit we could end the geosynchronous era for a long time
We've dispatched FBI agents to your location. We don't know how you got one, but you must obviously have a copy of the Military's training program ... you know, the modified (for military use) version of Atari's Asteroids where the rocket ship is replaced by the X-37B and the asteroids by rouge satellites.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Somebody has, in seriousness, suggested that the military, or NASA, should step in and neutralize a private operator's errant satellite so that our precious, precious, TV service need not fear interruption. I have yet to see a single person mention that this is, perhaps, not a terribly important use of public funds. What gives?
Why can't we send up a robot craft to attach to old/broken sats and fire it's thrusters to deorbit it? Hubble has an attachment point for just such a task, which makes it somewhat simpler.
Conservative, mod down for violating
"Be vewwy vewwy qwiet! I'm hunting for satewwites!"
The first license will be issued to a Maj Gen Fudd, I am sure.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
... see something wrong and can only think "Let's shot'em down".
With all the movies depicting that small craft or men in armored flight suits that just zip up into space and grab the thing without any worries, I almost find it hard to believe we can't do that yet. So sure, the Iron Man suit has icing issues and probably doesn't have the air supply to get up and back to space without some modifications. But why don't we have a cool little Space Shuttle dinghy that seats two and can race around to manage stuff like this?
'what we desperately need is a space janitor'
Gotta wait until 2075 for that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
"In New York, Miami beach
Heavy metal fell in Cuba
Angola, Saudi Arabia
On Christmas eve", said Norad
A soviet sputnik hit Africa
India, Venezuela, in Texas, Kansas
It's falling fast Peru too
It keeps coming, it keeps coming, it keeps coming!
Isn't this sort of job what we're paying Bruce Willis for?
At worst, a few cable channels, in one geographic area (mainly western north/south America) could experience some very minor losses of signal from this.
The folks at SES (the guys who own the satellite than MIGHT be interfered with are already taking action to limit what might happen (scootch over in their orbital slot a little).
We can't blow up Galaxy 15 - it's too far away for any current system, and would probably litter all of the GEO orbit with debris. That would mean danger for all satellites in those orbits (things like major civilian and military comm. satellites, weather satellites, satellite tv, satellite radio). Would be a really bad idea.
I wish to hell that people who don't know or understand anything about how orbiting satellites and debris behave would stop making ridiculous suggestions.
Don't let that pesky little bit about it being impossible to do hold you back.
I'm serious, too. A big net, like kevlar whatever strong material, scoop it up, the net is attached to some rocket that tows it to a point where it will degrade and burn up. (insert various hand waving picky engineering details here)
Better nuke it from..... er never mind.
I think we would need some sort of satellite in an orbit outside of GEO so the GEO stuff would pass below it. If we have a GEO orbit rogue, our "rustler" satellite would de-orbit and slowly match up with the rouge. Now that we're there we should grapple the rogue and spin up our really big gyroscopes to keep everything stable. Next, a device on the rover would produce a localized EMP burst to electronically "kill" the rogue. At this point, using maybe ion propulsion, we could safely de-orbit the whole mess or even slowly thrust the combined rustler and rogue out of earth orbit entirely and self destruct in some other handy gravity well (moon, sun, another planet).
Lurchicus - For Sig, see other side.
People are saying send up a tug boat to run around and fetch all the stuff.
A) geo-stationary at +23k miles above the surface. It is almost comparable to getting to the moon in terms of energy required.
B) consider the surface area of of the earth+23k miles radius
C) give it a hundred miles thick
D) give it many different orbits requiring acceleration and deceleration to match any given object
We don't have the tech to make anything to get up there and run around. Just hitting a single spot is hard enough, we usually miss by 100 miles or more when launching but it is close enough to do the work. The energy required to run around is ridiculous. Do we have a car/plane that can drive all over the planet? (not just 1 lap, but visit every 100m2 patch)
From what I've read, the most severe impact of this drifting, nonresponsive bird is that it is repeating all RF it is receiving, which will not only interfere with any other birds it goes by, but is polluting the spectrum.
So, if this is the worst effect, then just disabling it would be a real plus, and dodging it as G15 drifts out of harm's way is just a matter of waiting.
THIS would be a job for a laser. Cut off the solar panels, burn holes in it until it stops transmitting, it might not take much to kill this bird. Blowing it up just causes a debris field, though strapping or clipping a PAM onto it could let them drive it somewhere safe, like the ocean... Burning up in the atmosphere would be a good resolution right now.
Losing GCCS (or is it WAAS?) is unfortunate, and I don't know if there is a backup. Must be. :)
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
FYI, I am an aerospace engineer involved in the launch industry. Typically, how a spacecraft gets into GEO is a few stage process. First, a launch vehicle (Delta IV, Atlas V, Ariane 5, etc) puts you into orbit. What almost always happens is that the orbit the launch vehicle deposits the satellite into is a geosynchronous transfer orbit. This orbit is only useful as a, yes, transfer orbit out to actual geosynchronous orbit. From the transfer orbit, the spacecraft's own propulsion system then manuevers the craft into its designated position in GEO. But the launch vehicle itself is long gone. It takes all the delta-v the launch vehicle can deliver just to get the spacecraft into the GEO transfer orbit, so it would not be useful for doing anything else in orbit.
The best way to deal with this rogue satellite would be to send out another one to very gently attach itself to the rogue and then push it into a disposal orbit (which for GEO is typically just a higher orbit outside GEO). Blowing up the rogue would only create a huge amount of debris that would then cause problems for basically everyone in GEO, since it couldn't all be tracked or controlled.
as I posted just above, to dispose of a spacecraft from GEO, you put it into a higher orbit above GEO where you won't be in the way of any other operational spacecraft. This is the best compromise between the amount of fuel it takes to dispose of a spacecraft and putting it somewhere where it won't cause harm. Ideally, I suppose, you would want to completely deorbit, but that would take a whole lot of fuel, eating up weight that could be used for payload. You could also send it into an earth escape orbit (put it into orbit around the sun, essentially), but that also takes a lot of fuel.
Add radar absorbing and scattering material, and suddenly the X37 looks a piece of debris...
Debris in space? Alert the "Half Section" and deploy the "Toy Box"!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Blowing it up is _really_ stupid, but sending a space shuttle (which have two(?) missions left) to geo-synchronous orbit? Uh, yeah...
You may recall that in 2008, rather than risk that a large piece of a failing spy satellite would fall on populated areas, the government blasted it out of the sky.
That may have been the excuse that was given, but that was most certainly not the actual reason as anyone with half a brain might be able to conclude.
It's a spy satellite. It likely has a lot of single-purpose hardware in it which, if it were to fall into enemy hands (or any hands,really) could be reverse engineered to either be used against us in their own equipment or used to decipher and disrupt our existing satellites. Falling in the Pacific, where it might be more difficult to retrieve quickly/before someone else and there is a negligible "populated" area adds to this line of reasoning.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
why not just use a small, non destructive, rocket to push the 'bad' satellite into a failing orbit?
No debris. Landing (crash) site of your own choosing. Cheaper than a big missile.
In Soviet Russia orbit gets nuked from it!
As has been mentioned hundreds of times over the past few years, there is already too much junk in orbit. They need to send some booster rockets into orbit to lasso the wayward junk and tow it out into deep space.
someone needs to mention this to americans, i might as well be the one. Every time something breaks or doesnt do what you want it to or god forbid does something completely irrational, "fire ze missiles" shouldn't become the default response.
someone needs to do science to this satellite, not blow it up.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The action of destroying FY-1C had no plausible excuse other than as pure demonstration of capability.
USA-193 had several plausible excuses - and the excuse of destroying a potentially hazardous tank full of hydrazine propellant, which was frozen, and likely would have survived re-entry and impact to pose a hazard to people on the ground, (make no mistake - this stuff is nasty-toxic) - was at least plausible enough to "people close to the industry" that they bought this as the legitimate reason for downing the bird. (whether that's the real reason used at the highest level of decision-making, likely the Joint-Chiefs, is an exercise in the pure futility of idle speculation).
USA-193 was also carrying sensitive surveillance and communication/sigint technology that posed a real (though small) security risk to the United States. You can argue whether drastic measures were worth the small risk. Or we can again, speculate that USA-193 maybe had something in the payload none of us knows about that WAS worth the drastic measures.
USA-193's orbit was decaying; any expected debris was also expected to decay. Its low-altitude meant that any debris would rapidly encounter atmospheric drag, and burn-up. Thus, by-design, this exercise posed little threat as an ongoing orbital debris hazard. I'd be surprised if there were any significant pieces of this bird or the interceptor still up there today.
It's possible that, given the relative age of USA-193, and the "miraculous" staging of what was essentially an experimental launch vehicle AND system, in a historically "magically" short time-window (given we're talking spacelaunch technology), that the whole thing was a rigged test, USA-193 was a dummy-target, and the modified SM-3 design was prepared long in advance. But the nature of the build and launch team was definitely not as "black-ops" as one would expect for that kind of situation. The entire effort was very public, very publicized, and many non-cleared grunts spent a lot of OT putting the launch together (including coordinating global civilian tracking systems), to get it done before USA-193's orbit decayed so much that its path became too unstable and unpredictable due to atmospheric drag effects.
Though, there's much to be learned from staging this kind of exercise - because while taking out a spy or communication satellite at high altitude is a nice capability, it's also a political hot-potato. It's sort of like using a nuclear weapon. We all saw how much heat China took from their test.
In military theory, the battlefield of tomorrow includes the TACTICAL capability to quickly field low-altitude, short-term-use communication and surveillance satellites, for theater-scale conflicts. (hence, the x-37, and others, plus new zeppelins, drones, etc.) - (of course, this is based on the old, discredited Rumsfeld notion that we can do a "Panama" on countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. - You wish, Donnie. This is what happens when military technicians stray over the line into politics. They understand machines, weapons, and troops who wear uniforms and who are trained to act like machines and weapons - but have zero understanding of cultures and nations and history. But I digress.)
So, the TACTICAL ability to take out a TACTICAL satellite, is more politically acceptable; and likely one of the very strong reasons why they wanted to shoot down USA-193. Regardless of the "hazards" story fed to the press.
Ethically speaking, (space-environment-wise) I think it is far kinder and gentler than China's FY-1C demonstration. And those who suggest that USA-193 somehow encourages an arms-race. . . just shut up. Our behavior, our moral choices do not make us responsible for other nations' moral choices.
I don't think warheads or kinetic impact are, overall, a good approach, to cleaning up space-junk hazards. Maybe in special cases like USA-193. But for the literally hundreds of thousands of other pieces out there that pose a risk to space travel. . . we need a different approach.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Just call for Thunderbird 3 damnit!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
this seems to me to be the perfect use for those 747s with friggin lasers on their heads that the air force has been working on.
lose != loose
Call China, they love this kinda stuff.
coz no rubbish bin there
This bird is 22,236 miles away from the Earth. This is 21,836 miles higher than the Space Shuttle can go. These satellites are so high and so far away that we don't even have the technology to economically refuel them, let alone retrieve them. This isn't science fiction. This is hard truth. The best you can do is talk to it via radio communications, and if you can't do that, you're stuck in the situation we have today.
Still, since we have multi-hour satellite outages for several days twice per year during to the vernal equinox, you can do without your satellite-delivered television. Indeed, even now, contingencies are being arranged for HITS and the major satellite providers to provide alternate broadcast routes so that for your Home Shopping Channel is not interrupted too badly.
Please stop talking about shooting these birds down Star Wars style. They're just too far to do that. I'd like Slashdot to stop posting variants of this same, rather mundane story every day. Come August this will be permanently solved and we'll move on with our lives.
And, for people really worried about real life, that GPS WAAS signal outage will make your GPS ten feet less accurate. Relax. There are plenty of L-band satellite payloads to take over once this "crisis" has been averted.
Kriston
This is ridiculous... all these stories about zombiesats and television catastrophes based on this meandering satellite are complete rubbish. The satellite is not responding to control commands, which is essentially the same as a satellite that has lost all propellant without having been moved to a "graveyard orbit." There are many old satellites still in GEO orbit that can no longer be controlled. Take a look at the area around 75 East (http://www.sat-nd.com/geo/) for all the satellites with names like Raduga and Cosmos. They swing back and forth near 75East (one of the GEO libration points) forever.
Other satellite operators have to use propellant to move their active satellites out of the way of these uncontrollable satellites. It's not really that hard, considering the distances involved. The GEO arc is approximately 265,000 km long. Each degree is ~735 km wide. Typical spacing between satellites is 1.5to 3 or ~1,100 to 2,200 km. When in a satellite is in motion relative to a geostationary satellite, it will either be at a higher (moving westward) or lower (moving eastward) altitude. Uncontrollable satellites also begin to exhibit inclination or North/South movement relative to the equator up to a maximum of 15.
This zombiesat will drift along the GEO orbit very slowly relative to other geostationary satellites, in an enormous area. It is trivial for other satellite operators to move their satellites out of the way. Even if there were a collision event with another GEO satellite, it would be nothing like the Iridium collision, as the relative velocity between the two objects involved would be very low. Compare a parking lot fender bender to a head-on freeway collision.
The biggest problem is that the payload on the satellite is still active and transmitting. Most GEO satellites act like bent pipes: they listen for transmissions at a certain frequency, receive and amplify those transmissions, and then change the frequency (usually lower) for retransmission back towards Earth. Usually a satellite will feature some systems to prevent overload of the transponders/amplifiers by shutting down the affected amplifier. It sounds like this is what the operator and satellite manufacturer tried to do unsuccessfully. After passing the nearest neighbor satellite, they will likely try this again.
Eventually, without control updates from the ground, the satellite will lose its lock on the Earth/Moon/Sun/Stars and be unable to orient its solar panels towards the sun. The onboard batteries will quickly drain of power (in less than 24 hours), at which point the satellite's payload will shut down, and it will be essentially dead. That should happen some time in the next month or two.
As others have said, antisatellite kinetic weapons would be useless at GEO orbit. The only conceivable method to "destroy" a GEO satellite would be to use a space-based laser system to try to burn out the satellite's brain. The risk involved in something like that far outweighs the potential benefits, since it is more likely that the laser would burn a hole in the satellite's propellant tanks, turning it into a high speed projectile or (worse) causing the satellite to break up into small pieces.
So just sit back, relax, and let the satellites dance.
Or have ye not seen the cascading effects of blowing up satelites in orbit - 1 Sat = 100,000 bits at 5kms = a few bits hit other satellites = 3 smashed Sats = 400,000 bits flying around at 5Kms - knocks out 9 more sats = 12,000,000,000 bits of high speed junk in orbit... and so it goes. Or don't you read the space news?
How about if you heated the whole satellite hot enough to turn it into a gas? When the gas cooled would it be dangerous?