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Satellite Wars (ft.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the peace-is-becoming-more-voluntary dept.

schwit1 writes: Sixty years after the space race began, an orbital arms race is again in development. Military officials from the U.S., Europe and Asia confirm in private what the Kettering Group and other amateur stargazers have been watching publicly. Almost every country with strategically important satellite constellations and its own launch facilities is considering how to defend — and weaponize — their extraterrestrial assets. "I don't think there is a single G7 nation that isn't now looking at space security as one of its highest military priorities and areas of strategic concern," says one senior European intelligence official.

The U.S. is spending billions improving its defenses — primarily by building more capacity into its constellations and improving its tracking abilities. A $900m contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin in 2014 to develop a radar system capable of tracking objects as small as baseballs in space in real time. But there are also hints that the U.S. may be looking to equip its satellites with active defenses and countermeasures of their own, such as jamming devices and the ability to evade interceptions. A purely offensive anti-satellite program is in fast development as well. High-energy weapons and maneuverable orbiters such as space planes all open the possibility of the U.S. being able to rapidly weaponize the domain beyond the atmosphere, should it feel the need to do so.

12 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. The real worry should be Kessler Syndrome by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's a serious risk that in low-Earth orbit if one has enough debris it could cause a cascade of destruction where debris hits satellites breaking them up into more debris which hits more satellites and so on. Such a cascade is called Kessler Syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . If this happens it could render many orbits unusable for years. In that context, deliberately destroying satellites should maybe be considered a war crime since the potential for collateral damage impacting all of humanity is so severe.

    1. Re:The real worry should be Kessler Syndrome by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If two major powers (the kinds that have satellite constellations) are fighting, we have a lot more to worry about than Kessler Syndrome. Like, say, global thermonuclear annihilation.

      Beam weapons are popular for their instant hit ability, but you have to have constant real-time tracking of the object (not simply a calculated trajectory), otherwise the tiniest vernier-thruster maneuver is enough to cause a miss. There's also a lot of potential countermeasures, both temporary (such as clouds of dust) and permanent (layered reflective foil skins).

      If you don't need an instant hit then probably the most effective way is nothing more than a rocket full of sand. It's basically buckshot times tens of millions. If you launch opposite the direction of Earth's rotation (costs a couple thousand more m/s delta-V) you can get impact velocities in the ballpark of 15000+ m/s. A 5mg grain of sand would carry an impact force of 560 joules. By comparison, a 100mph fastball, an expert karate punch, and a professional golfer drive are all 150J. A .22LR leaves the muzzle of a gun with an energy of 168 joules, a .380 pistol with 245J, and a 9mm with 467J (again, remember that these are muzzle velocities, bullets lose energy quickly with distance). A grain of sand a satellite (aka, something that fundamentally has to be built lightweight) at 15000 m/s is just going to punch right through it. Tens of millions of them... well, you can't miss.

      Also, small objects like grains of sand don't have long orbital lifespans. If you really wanted to you could fire them at a non-orbital trajectory as well. And they don't necessarily make what they hit explode, even if they punch right through it.

      --
      Hello from Sputnik 2. I am receiving you.
    2. Re:The real worry should be Kessler Syndrome by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "bullets lose energy quickly with distance" IN AN ATMOSPHERE. In a perfect vacuum, a bullet is going to retain just as much of it's initial energy as your buckets of sand will - pretty much all of it, for a long long time. And, like your particles of sand, the bullets will stay in orbit long enough to make a number of near misses, before finally hitting the target, or falling into the atmosphere.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    3. Re:The real worry should be Kessler Syndrome by MountainLogic · · Score: 2

      The problem with throwing sand for spacefaring nations is that it denies space to you too. Now, a nation just on the edge of becoming a spacefarer, such as a North Korea or Iran, might see value in denying space access to other more powerful nations. Getting a sand payload to just hit leo and fly apart seems to be a much simpler proposition than putting a long term functioning surveillance satellite or weapon into a predictable orbit.

    4. Re:The real worry should be Kessler Syndrome by Rei · · Score: 2

      Which would be a relevant comment if I was talking about some sort of imaginary alternative proposal where major powers planned to fire handguns at satellites, rather than what I was actually talking about, aka giving people a sense of the energies carried by grains of sand in orbit by comparing them to the energies of bullets fired on Earth.

      --
      Hello from Sputnik 2. I am receiving you.
    5. Re:The real worry should be Kessler Syndrome by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even if sand was launched to LEO, it wouldn't have a long lifespan - the smaller the object, the higher its ratio of cross section to mass. And you don't have to launch into an orbital trajectory. And if you were really bothered, rather than launching sand one could launch grains of something that would sublimate in space.

      The sand itself doesn't pose a long-term debris threat. Even the act of disabling a satellite doesn't inherently do so - so long as it remains by and large a single piece. However, sand grains piercing into, say, a pressurized hydrazine tank and detonating the satellite into chunks of shrapnel of various sizes, that's a very different issue.

      --
      Hello from Sputnik 2. I am receiving you.
  2. Re:They use the integrated face system by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2

    They use the integrated face system to track satellites.

    How does Dirk Benedict track satellites?

  3. Nothing new... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prowler_(satellite)

    Prowler was an American reconnaissance satellite launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1990 in order to study Soviet satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The government of the United States has never acknowledged its existence, however it has been identified by amateur observers and through leaked information.

  4. No defense by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If North Korea got a big nuke to work (the size tested that was considered a "fizzle", where an H-bomb went off only as an a-bomb, or something like that), they could do quite a bit of damage to a country by launching a large nuke over it. There is no missile defense that could shoot down a DPRK ICMB fired at South Africa via US trajectory, but as it passes over Kansas, in low outer space, it is detonated. The blast would EMP most, if not all of the contiguous US, as well as take out any satellites over it at the time (about $1T of satellites, give or take a few orders of magnitude).

    If there's no defense against that, then there's no real point to waste money on security that can't protect from a single obvious attack vector.

    And the apocolypse would be much like some of the bad movies with just 2 bombs from DPRK. What would the world look like if Europe and the US were hit? Russian and China not hit. With the sudden power shift, we'd go into a world war, infrastructure would collapse.

    The ironic thing is that weaponizing space would increase the chance of it happening. How? Because when a smaller nation has no options, and nothing to lose, they'll do the most damage they can. A nuke hidden in a container in LA harbor was the "old" worst case. But only because those coming up with the worst case have no imagination.

    --
    Learn to love Alaska
    1. Re:No defense by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      So a single bomb with zero direct fatalities would result in a retaliation that targets millions of civilians? No wonder the world hates the evil USA.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  5. Zero direct fatalities? Think zombie apocalypse! by PeterM+from+Berkeley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Indirect fatalities are fatalities.

    Consider what would happen if the whole electrical network in the US went down. That is the likely effect of an orbital EMP. All electric power would stop and stay stopped. Gas pumps wouldn't work. Refrigeration would fail. Shipments of food would not arrive and mass starvation would ensue. People would be wandering around starving searching for ANY food at all.

    If you don't think nuclear retaliation isn't the right response for inflicting THAT upon the USA, what is the point of having a nuclear deterrent?

    --PM

  6. Don't we have treaties? by barlevg · · Score: 2

    Didn't we sign treaties with the USSR in like the '60s that agreed not to build orbital offensive platforms? Or did that just cover nukes? I guess I'm referring to the Outer Space Treaty.