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Converted Missile Launches Military Satellite to Track Spacecraft (space.com)
schwit1 was the first to share the news about Saturday's successful launch from Cape Canaveral: A satellite designed to help the U.S. military keep tabs on the ever-growing population of orbiting objects took to the skies atop a converted missile early Saturday morning. The Air Force's Operationally Responsive Space-5 (ORS-5) satellite lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 2:04 a.m. EDT (0604 GMT) atop an Orbital ATK Minotaur IV rocket, which carved a fiery orange arc into the sky as it rose... The first three stages of the Minotaur IV rocket are derived from decommissioned Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles... This morning's launch was the sixth for the Minotaur IV and the 26th overall for the Minotaur rocket family, which also includes the flight-proven Minotaur I, II and V vehicles.
The Orlando Sentinel notes it took place on "a long-dormant launch pad on the Space Coast...Launch Complex 46, which last hosted a rocket launch in 1999..."
The Orlando Sentinel notes it took place on "a long-dormant launch pad on the Space Coast...Launch Complex 46, which last hosted a rocket launch in 1999..."
Using a Peacekeeper ICBM to launch space observation satellites, is giving new meaning to military surplus.
The development started long before Obama.
The Minotaur series consists of various configurations of Minuteman and Peacekeeper missile stages, plus some stages from the Pegasus launch vehicle. All stages are solid rocket motors.
Minotaur I, II and II+ are based on the Minuteman missile. Minotaur I will carry about 600kg to LEO, while II and II+ are both strictly suborbital.
Minotaur III, IV, IV Lite, IV+ and V are based on the Peacekeeper missile. III is designed as the suborbital rocket, and has not yet launched. IV, its derivatives, and V, are orbital rockets of varying capacity. III seems unlikely to fly because there's just not much call for a heavy suborbital rocket. Who would need to put a ton-and-a-half into a half-orbit?
Minotaur C is a mostly a Pegasus rocket, but using the first stage of a Peacekeeper instead of launching from an aircraft. It used to be known as Taurus, but was rebranded after a string of failures. Nobody has yet fallen for it.
One, two, five!
Three sir!
Three!
Oh no, they've caught the holy hand grenade affliction too.
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I don't know the specifics of this mission, but most satellite launches are announced at least a year out, and there's a mandatory NOTAM to clear the flight zone. It was not in any way a surprise.
It also launched from Canaveral, not a missile silo in Montana. And Russia and China have advanced enough tech to distinguish a suborbital missile from an orbital launch pretty quickly - hell, at this point, civilian space fans are usually able to figure out orbital parameters, for those NSA payloads that don't disclose what orbit they're going to.
Oh Hai. I am from 1986.
People from 31 years ago could build space launch systems.
You assholes can't.
Yay, millennials!
I'm thinking a combo shot of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore.
If you have those two in hand and you don't host a cage match you are failing at life
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Who would need to put a ton-and-a-half into a half-orbit?
Someone with his own liquid propulsion?
Ezekiel 23:20
Yeah, but where are you going to find a cage big enough to hold both of their egos?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Oh Hai. I am from 1986.
People from 31 years ago could build space launch systems.
You assholes can't.
Yay, millennials!
Burma Shave?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
A very good use of old weapons.
The fact that it's a converted ICBM isn't, since Mercury-Atlas, Gemini-Titan, and Atlas-Agena (and many others) say hello from the '60s.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It's news because it's a fucking missile test. Nobody cares about the satellite, but the rest of the world should care that old US missile tech still works fine and can reliably place a satellite into orbit.
Oh, there is plenty of interest about the payload satellite. It's a "look and listen" and "orbit-changing" satellite, and one that looks at other satellites in geosynchronous orbit. It is for developing the capability to spy on them (or, in more NASA-mission verbiage: investigating the short-range, weak radio emissions that other satellites emit, and their characteristics).
In other words. . . . . laying the groundwork for an inspector satellite. . . . . something the NRO would build later. This current launch is probably intended for just studying the extent of capability of detecting radio leakage of microelectronic circuitry from existing satellites (spying on other satellites) by tooling around the geosynchronous orbital space. You know..... seeing what frequencies satellites tend to leak (SR broadcast), and can be reliably read. Unlike your home computer – which by FCC rules must keep its motherboard inside a Faraday cage-like enclosure – satellites are not built to shield their emissions..... only a very nearby object could spy on them in this way. NASA is just building the science and engineering knowledge-base that such a satellite would rely upon.
SHORT ANSWER: The satellite is doing feasibility tests for a satellite inspector, which would be an NRO and USAF/SMC project – and quite probably a dark program.
GOAL: Spy on other satellites.
Send up a geosynchronous satellite that has a bay with a micro-satellite or nano-satellite (5 feet to 10 inches). Smaller is better. Being in geosynchronous orbit, it could launch the inspector satellite. The inspector satellite would be stuck in an orbital plane, but with small amounts of thrust could move itself to anywhere in that orbital plane. So it sneaks up an adversary's satellite. It remains undetected because it would be too small to show up on radar, and most satellites do not have the capability to monitor their immediate surroundings.
The inspector satellite matches the target's orbit, flies in close (LiDAR range), and listens to the unshielded electronics said target satellite for a while. It simply intercepts and stores signals in various radio bands. Once full of samples, it returns to the mother-satellite. Data is encrypted and streamed over a short-range frequency/power from micro-sat to the mother-sat. Data is then included with whatever innocuous data the mother-sat is already streaming back to earth. Analysis is done on the ground.
Every microelectronic circuit emits radiation; it leaks. Digital computer circuits in particular. A lot can be learned about the target satellite's emissions by surreptitiously spying / listening to the (especially digital) circuit leakage. [REF: See Snowden leaks]
It transforms the previously mere collision-avoidance concerns in space, into to one where spy-satellite spying-on-spy-satellites is a real possibility, and extends our field for intel-gathering to include spying in the space domain by spying on other satellites.
It turns space into yet another theater for spying, where satellites spy on other (spy) satellites. This will be an expensive vulnerability to compensate for......