Does India's Anti-Satellite Missile Test Mean The Weaponization of Space? (reuters.com)

Reuters reports: India expects space debris from its anti-satellite weapons launch to burn out in less than 45 days, its top defense scientist said on Thursday, seeking to allay global concern about fragments hitting objects. The comments came a day after India said it used an indigenously developed ballistic missile interceptor to destroy one of its own satellites at a height of 300 km (186 miles), in a test aimed at boosting its defenses in space.

Critics say such technology, known to be possessed only by the United States, Russia and China, raises the prospect of an arms race in outer space, besides posing a hazard by creating a cloud of fragments that could persist for years. G. Satheesh Reddy, the chief of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation, said a low-altitude military satellite was picked for the test, to reduce the risk of debris left in space.
Space.com shared a reaction from a national security affairs professor at Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. They argued that India's test "likely represents a feeling by other countries, specifically India in this case, that the weaponization of space is forthcoming, and India doesn't want to be left out of the 'have' category if arms-control agreements are eventually reached."

Comments

Huh?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Does India's Anti-Satellite Missile Test Mean The Weaponization of Space

I thought it meant the dawn of a new era of peace, love, reason and understanding. No?

Re:Huh?

[Ol Olsoc]

Does India's Anti-Satellite Missile Test Mean The Weaponization of Space

I thought it meant the dawn of a new era of peace, love, reason and understanding. No?

It means ugh. I'd love to see their math on how the know the debris will drop out in 45 days. Ohh wait they "expect" it to drop out. These must be smart people that know the pats of all the debris. Killing satellites is actually pretty easy. It is a broad side of the barn type accuracy needed.

Pretty much if you can get a rocket to orbital velocity and make it go kaboom, you are 90 percent of the way there.

The utter stupidity of humans amazes me though. The US and the old Soviet Union understood and worked within the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. China understands this now. Sending up Satellite killers is neither difficult nor smart.

Our first war in space will be our last one for a long, long time. And it will destroy a lot of things that are very beneficial to everyone, as well as destroy things that are beneficial to the country that thinks it is smart to put a lot of high velocity space debris in orbit.

Re:Huh?

[Immerman]

I don't know - it seems to me that an anti-satellite weapon is actually primarily defensive in nature. It's not like you're nuking cities or releasing deadly plagues - there's no survival-threatening fallout from destroying satellites, just a physics-enforced omni-lateral armistice on military (and any other) satellites if debris gets to be a big enough problem.

It also serves as discouragement against the nations such as the US that have already militarized orbit (spy satellites, GPS), and are quite possibly secretly weaponizing it. The more people who can knock out your military hardware, the less valuable it is.

What does destroying satellites actually accomplish? You could take out GPS or communications satellites - that would be a nuisance, cause a bit of economic distress, and reduce the enemies battlefield efficiency a bit, but isn't *that* devastating or strategically valuable, and is unlikely to be something anyone would do unless surface hostilities had already begun. It also lets you take out orbital military hardware like spy satellites and weapons platforms - which are the real threat.

>Oh wait they "expect" it to drop out. These must be smart people that know the pats of all the debris.
Well, it's not really that hard - so long as you hit the satellite head-on so that none of the debris gets accelerated faster in its orbit, then ANY path the debris takes will put it on an orbit that plunges deeper into the Earth's atmosphere. And, if the missile was going either sub-orbital or counter-orbital, then it won't create any stable debris either.

Now is that the case? I have no idea. But at worst, it's still not nearly as reckless as putting military resources in space in the first place, so that other countries are required to develop the ability to remove them in order to be able to defend themselves.

Re:Huh?

[Solandri]

. I'd love to see their math on how the know the debris will drop out in 45 days. Ohh wait they "expect" it to drop out. These must be smart people that know the pats of all the debris.

Moving from a low orbit to a higher orbit typically requires two delta-Vs. The first one changes your circular low orbit into an ellipse whose perigee (lowest altitude of the orbit) is the same as the original orbit, but whose apogee (highest altitude in the orbit) is at a higher orbit. The second delta-V is done at apogee and converts the elliptical orbit back into a circle, now at the higher orbit.

If you only apply one delta-V, all it does is turn your circular orbit into an ellipse. The key thing is that this new elliptical orbit must include the point in the original orbit where the delta-V occurred. This means if the original orbit was circular, the new elliptical orbit must intersect that original circle at some point. Meaning a single velocity change cannot increase your perigee. Only if the delta-V was in the direction of the original orbital motion does it result in the same perigee (and a higher apogee). All other possible delta-V vectors result in a lower perigee, meaning if the original circular orbit was just outside the bulk of the Earth's atmosphere, the debris will now orbit through a denser part of the atmosphere, and burn up and deorbit more quickly than if left in the original circular orbit

So generally, these destructive tests aren't harmful when done to satellites in low orbit. The vast majority of the debris ends up in new orbits which will deorbit faster than the satellite would have if it had been left alone. And you might get a few "lucky" pieces of debris which are now in an elliptical orbit with the original orbit's perigee, but now with a higher apogee.

If you conduct the test at a higher orbit though (like China did), the debris whose new orbits have a lower perigee may not have a perigee low enough to skim the Earth's atmosphere to slow it down substantially. And so a greater portion of the debris will remain in orbit for decades or centuries.

Is this even a serious question?

[bferrell]

"Is this the weaponization of space?"

"Space" has been weaponized since at least 1966, when Robert Heinlein wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress... Remember dropping grain carriers loaded with tons of rocks?

Just as geosynchronous satellites became a foregone conclusion once Clarke postulated about the math for them in 1945.

Duh

Re:Is this even a serious question?

[AmiMoJo]

India is just following others anyway. Last week the US tested an anti-ICBM system, and both the US and China have tested their own anti-satellite systems before.

Re:Is this even a serious question?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Of course it's a question. The militarization of space has been possible for a long time, but the world's space-faring powers signed a treaty outlawing space-based weapons. Maybe update your calendar past 1966 and understand why this is a significant change in the status quo.

Re:Is this even a serious question?

[JaredOfEuropa]

The status quo being that only 3 other nations already had an anti-sat missile?

Re:Is this even a serious question?

[sheramil]

If you're gonna go there, then space has been weaponized since the 1930s, when the Lensmen took out Helmuth's base.

Re:Is this even a serious question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-ICBM systems don't leave crap in orbital space, it's all sub-orbital, on both sides.

You can't fix Kessler Syndrome by turning it off and on again. Who would've thought it would be India that started it.

Re:Is this even a serious question?

[quenda]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress... Remember dropping grain carriers loaded with tons of rocks?

It is a lot harder than "dropping". From the moon, you need a gun with a muzzle velocity of at least 2.3km/s. (or ballistic missile delta-V)
Current rail-gun technology can do this, but only for much smaller payloads, and we are a long way from getting the required battleships/frigates to the moon.

Re:Is this even a serious question?

[Immerman]

Think of it a little differently - Kessler Syndrome itself "turns off" the militarization of orbit - a physics enforced global armistice on orbital military hardware that lasts for generations, barring active cleanup efforts. Whether we "turn it on again" afterwards - that's up to us.

I suspect It would be extremely difficult to achieve in any meaningful way though - explosions and collisions aren't going to dramatically alter orbital energies, except downwards. So while you would develop "shells" of debris that would soon destroy any satellites within them, the orbits above those shells would remain clear. And the density of debris would have to be truly enormous to prevent launches getting through it to access higher orbits (albeit at greater risk and expense), while such a dense shell would deorbit much faster due to inter-debris collisions.

Don't kid yourself

[WindBourne]

US and Russia held back for decades due to treaties. But when china really got into space & was not bound by the treaty, well, all 3 almost certainly have weapons up there.

"Forthcoming" ?

[Antique Geekmeister]

There are too many security launches with classified payloads to pretend that the USA and Russia have not been launching at least anti-satellite weapons systems. Too many peaceful but energetic projects are also potentially weapons to be unwilling to acknowledge their danger. Solar mirrors can be aimed at space targets or ground targets, as can the "flying crowbar" project known as Project Pluto. The LEO cleanup tools, still on the drawing board, could take down accidental or obsolete debris in low Earth orbit. They could also destroy satellites.

Do bears run in woods?

[bobbied]

Weaponization of space has been a reality since Sputnik.

Weapons were the whole POINT of the exercise by both sides though the 70's, regardless of the propaganda saying otherwise.

The treaties that keep weapons from being based in space is very clearly only limiting WMD type weapons (nuclear bombs, chemical weapons etc) but they do not address conventional weapons, anti-satellite weapons or much else for that matter.

So India's actions are not evidence of anything new, just the continued realization that national defense *requires* a significant focus on controlling space in some way. Denying your adversaries the high ground, as we used to call it.