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A Mysterious Piece of Russian Space Junk Does Maneuvers
schwit1 writes What was first thought to be a piece of debris left over from the launch of three Russian military communication satellites has turned out to be a fourth satellite capable of maneuvers: "The three satellites were designated Kosmos-2496, -2497, -2498. However, as in the previous launch on December 25, 2013, the fourth unidentified object was detected orbiting the Earth a few kilometers away from 'routine' Rodnik satellites. Moreover, an analysis of orbital elements from a US radar by observers showed that the 'ghost' spacecraft had made a maneuver between May 29 and May 31, 2014, despite being identified as 'debris' (or Object 2014-028E) in the official U.S. catalog at the time. On June 24, the mysterious spacecraft started maneuvering again, lowering its perigee (lowest point) by four kilometers and lifting its apogee by 3.5 kilometers. Object E then continued its relentless maneuvers in July and its perigee was lowered sharply, bringing it suspiciously close to the Briz upper stage, which had originally delivered all four payloads into orbit in May."
This is the second time a Russian piece of orbital junk has suddenly started to do maneuvers. The first time, in early 2014, the Russians finally admitted five months after launch that the "junk" was actually a satellite. In both cases, the Russians have not told anyone what these satellites are designed to do, though based on the second satellite's maneuvers as well as its small size (about a foot in diameter) it is likely they are testing new cubesat capabilities, as most cubesats do not have the ability to do these kinds of orbital maneuvers. Once you have that capability, you can then apply it to cubesats with any kind of purpose, from military anti-satellite technology to commercial applications.
This is the second time a Russian piece of orbital junk has suddenly started to do maneuvers. The first time, in early 2014, the Russians finally admitted five months after launch that the "junk" was actually a satellite. In both cases, the Russians have not told anyone what these satellites are designed to do, though based on the second satellite's maneuvers as well as its small size (about a foot in diameter) it is likely they are testing new cubesat capabilities, as most cubesats do not have the ability to do these kinds of orbital maneuvers. Once you have that capability, you can then apply it to cubesats with any kind of purpose, from military anti-satellite technology to commercial applications.
It's pretty crowded up there, can we still afford to play "1965 Cold War" in 2014?
Mostly random stuff.
In post soviet space race, space debris spies on you!
It could be a spy satellite and space junk at the same time. Perhaps the Russians like irony.
Why else wouldn't you announce it? Especially if it's the size of a cubesat but can manuever, that's a breakthrough.
At least the US admits the X-37B is there, even if nobody has a clue what it's doing...
The recurrent weakness in US military thinking (and procuring) is that small numbers of fancy, high tech stuff can beat large numbers of low tech things.
That thinking has failed us numerous times. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and perhaps in space.
Who is going to be raising vodka shots when the 10 million dollar piece of space junk annihilates a 10 billion dollar XB-37?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The the NSA is waging a cold war on every nation on the planet. But trolls here are of course more concerned with the russian and chinese boogiemen.
He may have a point though. Russia is one of those countries where one man pretty much dicates things: What Putin orders, Russia does. He depends upon maintaining a high level of national pride and patriotism, which is aided by showboating exercises. I doubt that's the case here, because it's just not being shown off - if this were a stunt, Putin would be proclaiming it on state TV, not trying to deny it.
It's a satellite. It's small. It's secret. So the obvious theories are more likely: It's probably a test platform for something Russia doesn't want rival countries to find out about, either because it has military applications or commercial applications. Maybe it's a new anti-sat weapon, or Russia is conducting their own tests on new thruster technologies.
Mostly because after the US won that particular race, there was no reason for Russia to come second. It would have been humiliating to land on the moon after the americans. Not doing it at all is a face-saving measure.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
We didn't "lose" the war in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
We went in to Iraq to toss out Saddam and in to Afghanistan to get bin Laden (we didn't really have a beef with the Taliban except that they wouldn't hand over bin Laden) and we accomplished both of those goals. Militarily we "won" in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The problem is, then we stuck around in both Iraq and Afghanistan for the wishy-washy goal of installing a stable democracy in a land that wouldn't recognize democracy if it bit'em on the ass. That's where we "lost". Although my impression is we came close in Iraq. Maybe if had kept a presence in Iraq, maybe in the northern part. The Kurds seem to have their act together.
We went in to Iraq to toss out Saddam and in to Afghanistan to get bin Laden...
Yes, I'll accept that for the sake of argument that the mission was "accomplished".
More like installing another, more complaint puppet regime. Let's not mince meat here. The locals know what the intentions are. They were not being offered "democracy". They only got an *offer they can't refuse*
Note, don't take any of this as singling anybody out. Empires are empires. Sure hope we have our own similarly rigged "junk" up there though. And we might want to relearn celestial navigation. Bombs in space are fairly indiscriminate. I'll assume the X-37 has lasers...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Putin ensured ordinary Russians get a decent share of the raw materials income. While the relatives of your NY banksters wanted to exfiltrate all the raw materials and pay for that with some measly billions into Jelzin's private account.
THAT is why the U.S. media+establishment hates Russia. And why the Kievians hate Russia. Russia is a country not under the control of NY billionare-maniacs and their relatives like Chodorkovsky and the wacky blonde gas-thief Timoshenko who "wants to kill all Russians".
Actually, von Braun's team (brought over in Paperclip) was very conservative in their rocket engineering. They preferred incremental improvements over big leaps in technology. Thus the V-2 begat the Redstone, which begat the Jupiter, which together begat the Saturn I which begat the Saturn IB which (and this was a pretty good sized leap) begat the Saturn V. Two explicit examples -- notice that the Saturn IB and Saturn V both had fins on the first stage -- what other space boosters had or have fins? Also, the Huntsville team flew the Saturn I four times with a dummy second stage before they tried it in the two stage orbital configuration. As a result no missions launched with any Saturn booster failed due to launch vehicle problems (though the second [unmanned] launch of the Saturn V was close). Some other engineering teams in the US were pushing the state of the art harder -- such as the Atlas missile which relied on constant pressurization of the fuel tanks to maintain structural rigidity.