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US Spy Satellite Buzzes ISS (arstechnica.com)
The spy satellite that SpaceX launched about six weeks ago appears to have buzzed the International Space Station in early June. The fly-by was made by a dedicated group of ground-based observers who continued to track the satellite after it reach outer space. Ars Technica reports: One of the amateur satellite watchers, Ted Molczan, estimated the pass on June 3 to be 4.4km directly above the station. Another, Marco Langbroek, pegged the distance at 6.4km. "I am inclined to believe that the close conjunctions between USA 276 and ISS are intentional, but this remains unproven and far from certain," Molczan later wrote. One expert in satellite launches and tracking, Jonathan McDowell, said of the satellite's close approach to the station, "It is not normal." While it remains possible that the near-miss was a coincidence due to the satellite being launched into similar orbit, that would represent "gross incompetence" on the part of the National Reconnaissance Office, he said. Like the astronaut, McDowell downplayed the likelihood of a coincidence. Another option is that of a deliberate close flyby, perhaps to test or calibrate an onboard sensor to observe something or some kind of activity on the International Space Station. "The deliberate explanation seems more likely, except that I would have expected the satellite to maneuver after the encounter," McDowell said. "But it seems to have stayed in the same orbit."
i bet
Trump probably decided he could declassify it to the Russians on board ISS, and let them have a good look.
Well said, kamarad. Sieg heil!
Had it been a Russian spy satellite, the USA would be screaming "irresponsibility & recklessness" on part of the Russians.
Question is: Am I wrong?
You'll grow old and die, never being able to celebrate. Meanwhile I toast to the normalization of the internet and the end of online anarchy. :)
> Do liberals hate baseball players?
No. We just find them odd for enjoying such a boring Yank game.
Idiot.
4-6km at 10-20,000 mph is a near miss. That's literally seconds away, or a tiny angle error because you completely destroy both objects in question.
Even in aviation terms, that kind of distance is probably needing reporting for most places. 4-6km isn't exactly "far away" at even aircraft speed.
In orbit, it's just downright dangerous.
To be fair, they're not necessarily moving a 4 to 6 km/s relative to each other. If they're in "similar orbits" then the relative speed is much lower. I still wouldn't want the ISS to get hit by a satellite at any speed, but unless it was in a retrograde orbit, it's nowhere near that fast (in retrograde, it would be 8-12 km/s).
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
To be fair, if something the size of a spy satellite hit squarely ISS head on while on a retrograde orbit, the outcome would be a short-lived, and very faint, ring of tiny debris particles around earth. With very little else remaining. So being concerned about a fairly close pass is not that unreasonable - at least if no other information is available.
That having been said, I do agree with you that this was likely an intentional "close pass" while on fairly similar orbit, so the relative velocities were likely not that dangerous.
Now we know what this new satellite does. It aims at other satellites and buzzes them (and/or photographs them, or destroys them, either by smashing into it, or by using some sort of weapon on the platform itself).
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
> 4-6km at 10-20,000 mph is a near miss. That's literally seconds away, or a tiny angle error because you completely destroy both objects in question.
That would be one hell of an error with two objects on ballistic trajectories, considering how accurate even non-modern radar systems are. A resupply mission, non-ballistic, is a far worse danger for the ISS.
> Even in aviation terms, that kind of distance is probably needing reporting for most places. 4-6km isn't exactly "far away" at even aircraft speed.
Yet aircraft almost never collide above even the busiest airports.
> In orbit, it's just downright dangerous.
Not anything near as dangerous as all the tiny pieces fallen off obsolete satellites up there, which often break up or alter trajectories after colliding with each other. Also not anything near as dangerous as regular motorway traffic, with its often unpredictable accelerations.
Since the satellite wasn't rerouted, a better question would be 'what surface areas will it be able to see?'
What a disgusting neglect and gross lack of responsibility. The UN and world governments MUST act on this, it's unprecedented and can not be tolerated. If another country had done this, the U.S. would've thrown a huge circus about it themselves.
almost unimaginable? father son & holy hussy road show? would we then be allowed to keep our softer side? cease fire stand down...tears in the sky until the moms can finally stop crying... what evidence do we have that mary (earth bound mother of 'god) was a virgin anyway? borderline blasphemy... dark matters for sure..
looks like the orbit was planned this way; observers were predicting close passes...
http://spaceflight101.com/falcon-9-nrol-76/secret-nrol-76-iss-flyby/
Yet aircraft almost never collide above even the busiest airports.
But isn't that exactly because they maintain minimum distances between aircraft?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
This troll will be well fed. That's my prediction anyway.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
What this means is the movie Gravity may be possible after all. Take that Neil deGrasse Tyson!
Yes, and rightly so.
but now that you mentioned it.. was there an attending md of record? still leaves out the speculative merit of the question.. as well as the hoopla about the missing monkey hymens... thanks..
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later. wtf?
The Gospel of Mark 6:3 and the Gospel of Matthew 13:55-56 state that James, Joses (or Joseph), Judas, and Simon were the brothers of Jesus, the son of Mary. The same verses also mention unnamed sisters of Jesus. Another verse in the Epistle to the Galatians 1:19 mentions seeing James, "the Lord's brother", and none other of the apostles except Peter, when Paul went to Jerusalem after his conversion. The "brothers of the Lord" are also mentioned, alongside (but separate from) Cephas and the apostles in 1 Corinthians 9:5, in which it is mentioned that they had wives. Some scholars claim that Jesus' relatives may have held positions of authority in the Jerusalem area until Trajan excluded Jews from the new city that he built on its ruins.[7]... (that clears it up?)
Seriously? That's not a good thing.
The corporatised internet blows donkey dick. Bring me back before eternal September any day. Or create a new internet that's not user friendly that only smart people can access, not grandma and pre teens and corporations.
"Another question, if the maneuver was deliberate, is whether the US government informed Russia or other international partners on the space station. The Russian segment of the station controls the thrusters that generally are used to maneuver the station away from orbital debris, so such coordination might seem prudent." Also, appropriate Top Gun reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
... a tiny angle error...
I'm not saying mistakes don't happen (think Viking 1 antenna adjustment) but we have a pretty good record for not making tiny angle errors.
And as others have pointed out, the relative velocity isn't anywhere near the rates you cited. (and great way to mix KM and MPH).
Personally I think you're being just a teeny bit alarmist.
It would be a twofer. Destroying a Cold War legacy satellite and the huge boondoggle that is the ISS at the same time.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Especially not on the ISS, guns don't work in space.
Commercial airliners regularly fly 1km separation, and as little as 1500' altitude difference when going "head to head" in a controlled commercial flight lane.
whois (or was) the one who proves or disproves hymenical virginity in year 1? aspiring hymenologists want to know.. just reading the comments leaves big gaps in the facts dept.... more of a fairytailish believe it or die badly posit than anything? cease fire stand down.. seek a second unowned opinion whenever possible...
Quite a number of people in pre-independence America disagreed. You're a couple hundred years late to the party.
If you genuinely believe that, I want to hear your stance on knives, baseball bats and rocks. A trivial google will show large numbers of attacks using those weapons that are clearly too dangerous for the public to own.
It's almost as if the demon spirit in each gun that makes it evil (and takes over the mind of whoever touches it) is actually present in other objects too, but that's silly talk. We all know guns are special things, and make poor helpless people into killers. Judging by headlines, guns act alone and a person isn't even involved in a lot of mass shootings...
How much shorter would this event have been, and how many lives would have been saved, had at least one person at the game had a gun on them?
I own a gun for the same reason I own a fire extinguisher.
Yes, I can call the fire department. I'd rather not sit back and watch my house burn to the ground while waiting on them.
Likewise for the lives of my family.
And nobody can.
The fly-by was made by a dedicated group of ground-based observers
Was it? Or did they merely observe it?
Sig?
I fear the police more than I fear my neighbor's guns.
Nice social skills there fuckwit.
They didn't say km/s, they said km.
That's distance, not speed.
It was a near miss.
Only one way to find out!
Any single trigger pull, multiple discharge weapon requires special licenses from the federal level. Any firearm sold in the US legally without this license is single trigger pull, single discharge. As a firearm enthusiast myself, I don't even know where one would start to try to acquire a full auto or burst fire weapon.
You start by saving up about $15,000, the $200 tax and 9 month wait are a piece of cake.
For large, commercial aircraft, yes they maintain minimum distance, but for small aircraft, nobody is really keeping track other than the pilots themselves. Granted the closest I've ever gotten was on a commercial flight where I think it was a 737 was at our altitude about 1000 yards away flying the same direction as us. They quickly moved to a different altitude though. Or we did, sort of hard to tell.
But at any rate, with orbits, if they're 6km height difference, there's no way they're in danger of colliding. To change orbital height requires speed change, and once things are in orbit, they don't tend to change speed much. And I can't be bothered to do the math to figure out the speed change needed to move 6km in height, but I'm fairly certain it is non-trivial.
Commercial airliners regularly fly 1km separation, and as little as 1500' altitude difference when going "head to head" in a controlled commercial flight lane.
Commercial airliners also are flying at speeds two orders of magnitude less than the speeds of satelltes (500mph vs 17500mph), with human pilots on board, the ability to quickly change course, and active air traffic control in most cases. Kind of comparing apples to oranges here.
...it remembered to me that I have to renew my car insurance.
If more responsible citizens were armed there would be far fewer mass shootings.
from the prying eyes of the feds. nowhere. not even space. they've probably already got spy birds in orbit around mars, ffs.
When two objects have highly similar orbits which frequently coincide it implies very low velocity difference and very precise planning to synchronize the orbits. Yes, they are mutually moving very quickly but their relative velocities are lowest when they are nearby. This isn't two objects zipping by each other, they are more like in a ballet. Yes, it's extremely counter-intuitive.
The real story here isn't about some risk of collision, it's that there's some purpose in having them orbit together because they wouldn't end up in a situation of having multiple passes and a gradual decrease of distance on the closest passes any other way. That's the mystery.
The absolute speed is irrelevant, only the relative speed maters. The closer you are to the same orbit, the closer you are going to be to the same speed.
Russian Progress and Soyuz craft routinely come much closer to the ISS while moving at orbital speeds. They just do it at extremely close to the same orbit, and thus a speed difference of inches per second.
True, sorry, it was the 10-20,000 mph I should be quoting.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Please go back to Twitter, Mr. Trump.
Won't happen, ever. There is and there will always be one internet, and it has been brought to heel. Here's to the end of anarchy. :)
Guns work very well in space.
You can get an AK from any shady arms dealer for ~$500.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Don't call people idiots unless you yourself are willing to talk about the whole story. Direction is very important. NASA does not draw a sphere around the ISS, they draw a "pizza box". The pizza box is 50 km wide, but only 1.5 km tall. This is because stuff in space is not likely to change altitude very quickly, but it is moving very quickly within it's orbit. So, the AC is actually correct and a 4-6km altitude difference would take this thing well out of harms' way. If it was anywhere within the pizza box at any time, which it does not appear was the case, then yeah - it would be a near miss by violating NASA's safety zone.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The problem isn't the tax. I'd pay the tax. The problem is the $200 tax stamp hasn't been issued in years.
In the US? AKs are legal, semi-auto and many cost more than that. Not fully auto at all.
Much less. AKs in sub saharan africa go for about $20/each. But they are typically worn out, you don't want them, even without the potential for 10 years federal, just for possession.
After the fall of the USSR, the world was glutted with AKs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I stand with Zardoz, kill all they Yahoos. But I am somewhat concerned about being collateral damage.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The absolute speed is irrelevant, only the relative speed maters. The closer you are to the same orbit, the closer you are going to be to the same speed.
That doesn't help. "Closer to the same orbit", sure. But wildly different orbits intersect each other too. A spy satellite appearing 6km from the ISS does not in any way imply they have similiar orbits. The relative speeds can be enormous anyway.
A spy satellite usually have an orbit so it may fly over almost any part of the planet - that means its orbit must be rather polar. (Russia has lots of interesting stuff up north.) The ISS does not have that kind of orbit - so I expect a large speed difference due to that.
Two satellites in similiar polar orbits may be in different phase - one going north while another goes south. Again, the speed difference will be tremendous.
The ISS orbit has little variation in height - a spy satellite may have a more oval orbit. This is also enough to give a a large speed difference.
If one satellite is in a retrograde orbit and the other is not - well that is much worse. But it is not necessary - any of the lesser differences mentioned still have enough difference in orbital speed or direction that a crash will be very destructive. The ISS is not built to survive a crash even at "car speed" - never mind stuff that goes thousands of times faster.
There was a bodyguard there, capitol police I think, and they took the shooter down.
Bullets have their own oxidizer. They work just fine in space just as they work underwater.
And his RIO are being chewed out about circus stunt flybys.
They don't bother moving the ISS to avoid an object unless an object comes within 2 km vertically or 25 km horizontally. That is classified as "close"
"The pizza box is 50 km wide, but only 1.5 km tall."
Hi, just stopped in to say thanks for the info. I knew that differing orbit altitudes are not as "close" as common sense might guess, but didn't know the scale. Oh, and kudos for the mental sight picture of a giant pizza.
--
I'm inexplicably reminded of Douglas Adams...how did he put it?
How do we eat?
What should we eat?
Where shall we have lunch?
--
But I digress.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Ha! I wish it was my analogy - I think "pizza box" is the NASA term :) Douglas Adams would approve.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's just not a good idea to use them there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Slime
The fly-by was made by a dedicated group of ground-based observers who continued to track the satellite
No it wasn't.
after it reach outer space.
Wow.
4 Km seems to me to be quite a distance, given that they're able to determine orbits to within centimeters days and weeks ahead. The issue here seems to be click-bait and the public's (as well as many slashdotters) complete ignorance of the actual risk. Last I heard, space has 3 dimensions, I have zero idea whether they meant that the two orbits closest approach is 4 km, or that the ISS and satellite were within 4 km of one another, or what. Any elliptical orbits around a sphere when radially projected onto the sphere will intersect at two points (unless they are identical) Those points of intersection need not be the points of closest approach. The most obvious question is was the fly-by intended to use the spy satellite to look at the ISS or was it to use the ISS to look at (something, or something wrong with) the spy satellite... There are apparently two Americans onboard right now, one of whom is a USAF officer...
LEO is not "outer space" - not even close to it. You're still in the atmosphere.
Using 400 km and 406 km for altitudes yields a delta-velocity of ~3.4 m/s using this online calculator (no affiliation) - http://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1224665242
Seems likely to have been for calibration purposes.