USA 193 Shootdown Set For Feb 21, 03:30 UTC

An anonymous reader writes "Amateur satellite watcher Ted Molczan notes that a "Notice to Airmen" (NOTAM) has been issued announcing restricted airspace for February 21, between 02:30 and 05:00 UTC, in a region near Hawaii. Stricken satellite USA 193, which the US has announced plans to shoot down, will pass over this area at about 03:30. Interestingly, this is during the totality of Wednesday's lunar eclipse, which may or may not make debris easier to observe."

I wonder

if they chose the eclipse date on purpose. We'll wait and see what they say AFTER it all happens.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along

I find it quaint, the notion that the real reason they have to shoot the satellite down is because it has a tank of hydrazine onboard. Meanwhile, the Russians have let *freaking nuclear reactors* reenter our atmosphere. It's pretty transparent that they're A) trying to upstage the Chinese, and B) prevent any tech from making it into the hands of hostile parties. Even more transparent than the whole thing with A.Q. Kahn:

1) Pakistan funds its bloody nuclear program via nuclear equipment sales.
2) The international community eventually can no longer look the other way.
3) Khan steps forward. "Whoops, it was me! My bad. Every sale we made to every single country, I arranged, negotiated, and shipped everything, all with government aircraft, all of my own. No Musharraf involvement, nosiree!"
4) Bush and Musharraf: "Bad Khan! Well, that case is solved."
5) "House arrest", of the kind that lets you travel across the country. No charges pressed. Everyone wins.

Re:Nothing to see here, move along

I find it quaint, the notion that the real reason they have to shoot the satellite down is because it has a tank of hydrazine onboard. Meanwhile, the Russians have let *freaking nuclear reactors* reenter our atmosphere.

No offense, but comparing safety concerns of the US with the Russians is sort of bizarre. They are the country that used to just drop old reactor cores in the oceans after all. I honestly don't think they cared that they tossed radioactive waste across Canada any more than they cared what would happen when they build enormous nuclear reactors without containment domes. And if you think these are minor issues of environment protection then look up their involvement in the Aral Sea disaster. Russia is the antithesis [worldfrontpage.com] of environmental protection.

Oddly enough...

... they're going to use a pop bottle [slashdot.org] to do the deed.

Good coverage

Bruce is a fellow satellite spotter [utah.edu] also with some degree of background and in the subject matter and has good coverage here [and-still-i-persist.com].

Re:Good coverage

There is also some interesting analysis done by the Federation of American Scientists that suggests this is just an excuse to test out some anti-satellite missiles. An interesting read.

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2008/02/us_plans_test_of_anti-satellit.php [fas.org]

Re:Good coverage

FAS always raises hell over weapons tests of any kind. What else is new.

The SM-2 to be used is actually being MODIFIED with new software to try to do the intercept. It's not certain it'll work. So I guess that makes it a test.

The eclipse likely makes it easier to spot the "target".

But at least we aren't leaving a shitload of crap to fuck up usuable orbit space like the ChiComms did in their ASAT test. This bird is coming down NOW so why not test on it. It's cheap, if it works maybe we have a new use for an existing system w/o spending millions, we clean up our own mess by shooting it down, the debris will come down (with some risk as it's smaller pieces) and not clutter the crap out of orbital space, and we trash anything secret the enemy might try to capture (assuming it survived re-entry..but why risk it?). Sounds like a bargin "test" to me.

Re:Good coverage

I wonder what they mean by "shoot down"? It's not like an airplane, that if damaged, can't stay flying and falls to earth. If you blow up a big satellite, you end up with a bunch of little satellites, and that doesn't make them de-orbit much faster does it? I was under the understanding that blowing up stuff in space is BAD and creates a major headache more of space debris. I suppose if you really wanted to de-orbit a dead satellite you'd want to shoot a missile at it that would attach, and fire retro rockets to slow it down so it would degrade its orbit enough to hit atmosphere were it would be pulled down on its own from there.

Re:Good coverage

It is also very important to note that the missile they are shooting it with does not have a warhead. They are basically just hitting it really hard, hoping to break it into pieces.

Re:Good coverage

I'd expect that shooting a satellite whose orbit is already decaying might hasten the process by a couple days (smaller pieces would generally have a lower ballistic coefficient and therefore decay faster), but not by a significant amount.

The real benefit (to the US) is that turning a big, expensive satellite with lots of classified equipment on board into a bunch of little satellites means that the expensive bits are rendered unusable and far less likely to get to the ground intact, where they can be analyzed. It also provides a good opportunity to test a new missile system, and shows the Chinese that the US can play at their game, too.

Re:Good coverage

Yeah right... The fact that it's a two-year old, highly-classified spy satellite has nothing to do with it. The *real* reason that they're spending $60M is to make sure that some fuel doesn't contaminate an acre or so of land.

Re:Good coverage

Well, there may be some truth to it. But like most decisions, there are a lot of things at work here:

1. Having a giant hydrazine tank land on someone's house would be a PR nightmare.

2. Having a spy satellite presumably filled with highly-classified stuff fall into the wrong hands is something They(tm) try to avoid.

3. Demonstrating to the rest of the world that we can blow their satellites into much less useful pieces is somewhat in line with the agenda of the Bush administration.

4. It can also be pointed to as a success of the missile defense program.

So I wouldn't write off the whole hydrazine tank issue entirely, but I doubt its the primary motivator.

Re:Good coverage

Yeah right... The fact that it's a two-year old, highly-classified spy satellite has nothing to do with it. The *real* reason that they're spending $60M is to make sure that some fuel doesn't contaminate an acre or so of land.

Nothing useful in terms of spy gear is going to make it through re-entry. What might make it through re-entry is a large, resilient fuel tank containing high-toxic, probably carcinogenic, fuel. Logic dictates that if there was really something classified on the satellite that they didn't want to survive re-entry they simply would have designed it to not survive re-entry or they would have installed a self-destruct. Shooting it down at this point for the reason you're implying doesn't make sense.

Besides, if it's the gear (rather than the fuel) that concerns them then why haven't they bothered shooting down other de-orbiting sats in the past?

Conspriacy goldmine

A super secret sat is not responding for unknown reasons. This requires a shootdown which just happens to occur during a lunar eclipse.

Wow, who gets the movie rights for this one?

Re:Conspriacy goldmine

There is only a movie if the missile moves it back and to the left

Moon hiding behind megameters of solid rock

Since that time interval occurs during daylight hours near Hawaii, with the eclipsed moon (necessarily) below the horizon, I doubt the eclipse will have much effect on visibility. :)

Re:Moon hiding behind megameters of solid rock

Don't be confused by the expression "shoot down". The satellite is still very high above the Earth. The cloud of debris will continue for many orbits and alternate between daylight and nighttime every 45 minutes, like every other low-orbit satellite.

Yep, but by the time the debris orbits into the Earth's shadow, about 15 minutes after the impact if my guesstimate is right, it will be entirely dark in visible wavelengths, shining only by reflected light. At that point, the lunar eclipse hinders rather than helps things, by removing a light source. And the eclipse moves out of totality within another 15 minutes after that.

Short version: The timing relative to the lunar eclipse is pure coincidence.

Unless it's a critical part of the top secret plan to propitiate Nyarlathotep and force Great Cthulhu back into an uneasy aeons-long slumber among the cyclopean ruins of R'lyeh, the fabled city of the Old Ones, looming over the black abyssal plain that lies miles below the sparkling sunlit waters of the Pacific.

In which case, I don't want to know what's in the payload of that missile.

...which may or may not

This post may or may not be a way to tell you that may or may not is a totally ambigious statement. Some people may or may not notice this. I may or may not be modded Offtopic but I can also be modded +1 Funny or +1 Insightfull. However, this may or may not be the case.

good information there!

which may or may not make debris easier to observe

Way to limit the two choices down to two choices....

Isn't it obvious?

That this is just a response to China's ASAT test of January last year?

China: you see, we can blow up your satellites!!
USA: aha! We can blow up your satellites too!!

General public: Why are they blowing up satellites?

During the eclipse?

No doubt goats will be slaughtered, wiccans consulted, and pentagrams drawn all in the hope that our missile intercept technology will actually work in a non-staged event.

Outsource it

I'm surprised we didn't outsource this to China.

Re:Disappointing. We need to LASER it.

Disappointing. We need to LASER it.

The ill-tempered sea bass have a limited range, sorry.

Re:How Convenient

I find your post a little hard to follow, however with regard to space debris, the satellite is sufficiently low that all the debris is expected to deorbit relatively quickly (days or weeks).

Re:The Sorceror's Apprentice

The thing's low enough that all of it -- intact or in pieces -- will deorbit soon (days to weeks). And actually, smaller debris deorbits faster; there's more surface area per volume (and hence per mass), so drag from the not-quite-vacuum of the upper atmosphere decelerates small pieces faster.