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North Korea's Satellite Is Out of Control
Koreantoast writes "After failing on numerous occasions, North Korea has finally put a satellite in orbit. But according to US officials, it is now 'tumbling out of control.' This is bad news, and more bad news, covered in a double layer of extra bad news. From the article: 'According to US officials, it appears that North Korea's new satellite has failed to achieve a stable orbit and is now "tumbling out of control." The greatest danger is the threat of it colliding with another satellite, adding to the growing debris field around the earth.' A separate Gizmodo article provides links for tracking the current location of the satellite."
Its unclear if the new min-shuttle has offensive capabilities.
...it can cover multiple orbital trajectories while imperialist pig Yankee capitalist satellites are only capable of a single orbit.
US launches secret space drone... NK satellite suddenly goes into an uncontrolled descent.
1 + 1 = ...
If you're in orbit, you're in orbit. If your orbit is too low then it's a decaying orbit but "tumbling out of control" is a bit of hyperbole from the press. It might be harder to predict the re-entry if the satellite is spinning and has no attitude control; maybe that's what they mean. I suppose it's possible that it could strike that atmosphere and bounce before re-entering, but will it bounce high enough to impact something in LEO? Details please. I bet this is a tempest in a teapot; not that I condone NK's actions or think they're particularly smart.
Or, it was designed to be a simple parabolic missile, but NK test firing a missile is banned by the UN, so they pack in enough fuel to get to orbit, any kind of orbit, and there was never a plan to make it a stable orbit nor were there thursters on board to do so. In other words, a missile test disguised as a orbital launch.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I could see several scenarios in which this leads to war with North Korea
Tom Clancy... is that you?
is the taco bell target still in the pacific? Mir didn't hit it but I still want that free burrito!
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
I hope it lands back in North Korea so its citizens can get some return on their investment.
from the article after someone makes a prediction of it crashing somewhere.
One of the follow-ups: " I predict it will crash into a Mayan temple in 9 days "
You guys have a tough bar to reach in comments this time :)
Just hold on a moment.
Okay, look. North Korea are not the world's nicest people from what we know, either to their southern neighbour or (far more commonly) their own people. Let's just get that out of the way right now.
But seriously. Seriously. "Takes them out"? A Korea War II would be extremely costly for the western world and over what? A satellite that, worst case, smashes into one of the US Military's satellites (say a GPS one, not one so secret they'd just go "WHAT SATELLITE, IT WAS A TRAINING EXERCISE"). Then the debris takes out a few other satellites, and the GPS network takes a hit, being down for a week or so.
That's in my mind the absolute worst case scenario, and it would be pretty bad. We use GPS for everything; the airlines would take a hit, the road toll would go up, some smart missiles and bombs would stop working.
And you want to fucking bomb them for this? It's clearly just an accident. Sure, criminal ineptitude possibly, but that's what sanctions are for.
There's no reason anyone should die over this even in the absolute worst case. Stop crying for war as your country plummets over the fiscal cliff of economic crisis. And, of course, you sound so confident you can win (protip: You didn't win last time).
Are you fucking insane? Or one of those hardcore American evangelical Christians whose line of thought goes:
God blesses America to do whatever the fuck we want. Skirmishes? Bah, bomb those Athe-commies back to nothing. It escalates to total war? It's Christians vs Atheistic Commies! God will bless us with victory. It escalates to nuclear war? Praise God, the end times are upon us! The rapture is here!
So I repeat my question. Are you fucking insane?
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Figures, Best Korea would launch a satellite with a bad attitude.
Pity, Japan's having pitching a fit over NK's poor angle of attack, but y'all just need to get over it - NK clearly has no inclination to just roll over and take it!
In the original space race, when the Soviets launched a satellite, it was seen in the west as a proxy for an ICBM - the (correct) theory being, that a nation firing a sub-orbital rocket was "interesting", while a nation launching an orbital craft meant they could, potentially, hit "anywhere" (subject to orbital inclination and other similar factors)
Now that the Soviet Union has fallen, to be replaced by "friendly" (yeah, right) Russia, other nations can launch satellites with impunity (China, India etc). Most of them are, if not "friendly" to the west, are at least "not complete and utter fruitbats" (that's a technical term BTW).
North Korea (DPRK), though, is still transitioning from the "complete and utter fruitbat" of Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Un, so that, at this stage, it is hard to say whether the new Dear Leader's plans for satellites are peaceful or not.
Assumption 1: it is peaceful, so an out of control satellite is, as USA, Russia and several others have found out, merely an expensive mistake
Assumption 2: it is deliberately provocative, (we launch a satellite, so an ICBM is easier), so an out of control satellite is... well what, exactly?
Let's not forget that part of DPRK's posturing is directed inwards - their recent "nuclear accident" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanggang_explosion) - to quote wiki "No neighboring nations have claimed any detection of radioactive isotopes characteristic of a nuclear explosion.", even though their news media hinted it as such, means that even an unsuccessful satellite will still be seen as a "we are a major power" - when broadcast to those in DPRK
So... where from here? DPRK joins the space race. That is still a concern. Does it matter that the satellite failed? Only if it was intended to be "just a satellite" If it was a "proof of concept" for an ICBM, then a wonky orbit is still an orbit
"She's furniture with a pulse"
pff.. why when they can just send up the X302 to blow it out of the sky?
Oh noes.. the UN might write us a letter telling us how angry they are..
And, of course, you sound so confident you can win (protip: You didn't win last time).
We didn't have Chuck Norris last time.
Because they had to be able to go to the moon to launch an ICBM, seems legit.
Can't smash into a GPS satellite, because they're in a much higher orbit.
The war would be short, yep. Over in a few days, a week or so tops.
Okay, so now you have an impoverished third world country where the single biggest employer, the military, has been utterly destroyed, full of fanatically loyal people who hate you and will do everything to kill you even at the expense of their own lives.
"Troops home by Christmas" was the talk during WW I, "a shadow of the Great War" was the talk during WW II, "a bunch of fishermen in mud huts" was Korea (familiar?) and Vietnam. "Kill Osama, get out" was Afghanistan and "Get Sadam, freedom will rise" was Iraq.
If you think a conflict with North Korea would be "short" you're not looking beyond the big picture.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
You think North Korea cares about the UN? The UN can't agree that the Syrian government should be sanctioned. For launching a missile, the UN might decide to write a weakly worded statement that future misbehaving might incur a more strongly worded letter. Maybe. After weeks of negotiations and diplomacy.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
North Korean succeeds again, our new satellite is able to spin faster than any imperialist satellites and is expected to make a triumphant return any second now.
I feel bad for those poor people, lets focus on precisely crash on Kim Jung Un.
Tomorrow is another day...
This is basically what was expected in Japan after WW2 based on what was happening in the final weeks of the war. In reality, it was one of the most peaceful occupations the world has ever seen. I don't think you can predict that easily how an oppressed and starving population will react to occupation.
The GPS satellites have altitude well in excess of 20.000km, so for a North Korean ballistic missile launched satellite with an orbit at just around 500km to hit them would make for some big news indeed. That problem aside, you should probably know the GPS satellites are not something you go pick up at a nearby hardware store - they have a lead-time of years, decades if you count slipping them in to the budget somewhere and generally mucking around.
While at any given time there are a few irds hold on spare, should a significant number (enough for GS network to take a hit) of them be lost due to a runaway Kessler syndrome or repeat Carrington event, it would be far longer than few weeks to recover the situation. Indeed, the big worry people are hinting at is a Kessler syndrome, where our satellites decide to play a big game of billiards at orbital velocity in the sky. Not only would in theory ALL currently orbiting satellites be lost, but the debris would prevent ANY space-launches for centuries to come.
The ISS, by the way, is below 410km so quite far below the North Korean satellite for now, though the satellite's orbit is sure to decay in the future. Luckily ISS presents fairly small footprint for collissions, in the big scheme, but countless other satellites and debris lay below the satellite's current orbit. It's not good, but it's probably not catastrohic considering how frequently some satellite or other malfunctions. Our near orbit has grown so crowded however that satellites have for long been de-orbited or moved to safe orbits when taken out of service (Like that Russian satellite that was simply de-orbited rather than re-purposed because it might've received more than its alloted dose of radiation in the Van Allen belts and was therefore a risk).
someone modded this up?
they went to the moon for the whales. everybody knows that.
do you have any idea how f'ing busy I am, Hans Brix??
The UN in general /can/ agree on Syria, it's just that Russia and China have their vetoes on the Security Council and used them to protect the Assad regime. Why? My theory is geopolitics: Russia is trying to keep a friendly government near its southwestern flank and head off US/NATO gains in the region, and possibly they're trying to keep Islamists off said flank lest the plague spread into their territory.
China's just wanting to cock-block us so we don't get too powerful, and maybe they've got some lucrative trade going on, or would like to.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I liked that theory at first, but then I took a look at the orbital parameters... It seems to be almost pefect sun-synchronous orbit. Public experts where holding reaching sun-synchronous orbit out of reach impossibility for NK given the need to launch it at such an angle as not to have spent stages fall on ground where they could be construed a hostile action.
I'm sure we'll hear more on this in the coming hours, but it looks to me like they must've spent a lot of effort and risk on reaching sun-synchronous orbit (one conductive for earth-observation, such as spy or weather-satellites which NK claimed it would be). It doesn't seem credible that they would've done that just for a ballistic missile test and dummy payload. Also something about the way most news-sources quote the "tumbling out of control" seems to give up the impression they believe it initially had attitude control, though to be honest I'm curious to hear how they would determine when it had or didn't have attitue control.
Not only that but this is probably the only instance where Canada was better armed than the US.
The satellite appears to be in a stable, nearly circular orbit. Perigee 505.3 km, apogee: 588.3 km. That's higher than the ISS. It's not going to re-enter any time soon. Good launch. Some idiot seems to have looked at a tracking site, saw that the altitude was decreasing, which happens for about half of each orbit, and made a big deal out of this.
It's not clear that the satellite is out of control. Many satellites tumble during their early orbits, until attitude stabilization is commanded and achieved. Since North Korea doesn't have a worldwide network of tracking stations, they can only send commands when the satellite passes over their country. They may choose to let it orbit for a while and collect some telemetry data before trying to stabilize it. Assuming it's equipped for attitude stabilization. Early US and USSR satellites were not stabilized.