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US Claims Satellite Shoot-Down Success
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday February 21, @08:44AM
from the hope-your-foil-hat-was-on-snug dept.
from the hope-your-foil-hat-was-on-snug dept.
Readers of Slashdot last valentines day will remember discussing US Plans to Shoot down a damaged spy satellite. An anonymous reader noted that the US is
reporting success last night, thus saving us from hydrazine exposure. Of course this makes me wonder- if it's this easy, wouldn't an international super power war pretty much immediately mean the downing of every satellite in orbit?
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US To Shoot Down Dying Satellite 429 comments
A user writes "US officials say that the Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March. We discussed the device's decaying orbit late last month. The Associated Press has learned that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere. 'A key concern ... was the debris created by Chinese satellite's destruction -- and that will also be a focus now, as the U.S. determines exactly when and under what circumstances to shoot down its errant satellite. The military will have to choose a time and a location that will avoid to the greatest degree any damage to other satellites in the sky. Also, there is the possibility that large pieces could remain, and either stay in orbit where they can collide with other satellites or possibly fall to Earth.'"
Firehose:US claims sattelite shoot-down succes by Anonymous Coward
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
in other news (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:in other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:in other news (Score:5, Funny)
I'm waiting for the anti-(anti-missile missile) missile
They need to be more careful. (Score:5, Funny)
priorities? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:priorities? (Score:5, Funny)
Video (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they expect them to fall out of the sky... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not about hydrazine- and it's not new. (Score:5, Informative)
2. The likelihood of the propellant tank making it to Earth in a populated area while still sufficiently intact to release hydrazine on impact is infinitesimal. The satellite was launched in 12/06, and represents the pinnacle (well, a year ago) of US spy satellite technology. There's plenty of good coverage in The Washington Post that supports both of these points.
Make no mistake about it, this is all about preventing the tech from falling into the wrong hands.
Video of the intercept (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=71c_1203596547 [liveleak.com]
Like hitting a bullet with a bullet. Neat engineering feat.
Cold War News (IE, Old Hat) (Score:5, Informative)
USN's Standard SM-3 missiles are their new Black and Decker tools of fleet defense. They pulled a preproduction bird off the table, loaded a ASAT seeker on it and sent it on it's way.
A little bit more on the new theater missile interceptor;
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sm3.htm [globalsecurity.org]
So of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary Info (Score:5, Informative)
USS Lake Erie [wikipedia.org]
Missle Used:
SM-3 [wikipedia.org] with kinetic interceptor [wikimedia.org]
Tracking was probably provided by the SBX [wikipedia.org] amongst other sensors.
Previous intercept videos of importance:
Japan Defence SM-3 test [dailymotion.com]
Prior shot from USS Lake Erie [youtube.com]
The propaganda that I find really funny is the DoD stating that it "nailed" [cnn.com] the fuel tank. C'mon, the impact probably released over 100 megajoules of energy. Were they really aiming for the "fuel tank" or just trying to hit the damn thing? With that much energy, who cares?
Big Dick waiving, yes. Technical success, yes. Political success, TBD.
On a side note, I was reading a story [bwcinet.com] written by a guy who was stationed at Thule AFB in Greenland where one of the first BMEWS (Ballistic Missle Early Warning System) Radars was deployed back in the late 50's early 60's. From a tech standpoint, it is quite fascinating what we could do back then with such limited technology and how it was accomplished. Read the intro through the epilog, I enjoyed it, so I'm passing it along...
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Insightful)
What irked me the most was China's whiny statements about the test, which was extremely benign in every regard, while China themselves produced a huge band of debris in a very useful polar orbit for no legitimate reason whatsoever.
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Interesting)
I contend that this was a 3-for: the US got to test it's anti-ballistic missile system, got to protect its secrets, AND got to reduce the risk to people. And for what? No risk whatsoever. If it missed - no change in situation. It hit, though, and so now everything will just burn up.
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Informative)
Not necessarily. If the hydrazine tank is parked in the center of the vehicle it's very probable that it could remain cold enough. You completely negate radiation and most likely convection depending on design, so you rely solely on conduction for heating. If you have a big, massive satellite that is densely packed it is conceivable that the center could remain cold, just like the Apollo modules kept three people comfortable for reentry. Also a big dense object like a satellite is likely to stay intact through re-entry with very little breakup.
Although I agree there is much more at stake than just hydrazine, and I think spy secrets alone would have been justification, there's no saying the hydrazine would be completely gone. There's multiple justifications for this shot, they just picked one to tell people.
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Because the risk to human life was non-zero
2) To prevent sensitive technology from going into the wrong hands. (You can bet that there would have been a mad dash to salvage at ground zero by just about everybody once it went down)
3) To further test our ABM technology.
4) To show everybody once again that we kick ass.
5) And most importantly: Because there were no downside to doing it. This wasn't a dangerous mission that put soldiers or civilian lives at risk. We launched a missile, and if it missed, no big deal, no harm done. But if it was a success, we can celebrate because of reasons #1-#4.
There really isn't any valid argument for not trying this operation.
Re:Wasn't that the whole point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Pull!" [ratchet] [BANG] [ping!]... "Pull!" ... (Score:5, Informative)
If you start blowing up sattelites in stable orbits, you are playing a kind of russian roulette that could start a chain reaction, destroying all satellites in a given orbit zone. The fragments of broken sattelites don't slow down, like on earth, nor is the chance that they come down to earth and burn up in the atmosphere particularly high (especially with high-altitude orbits). They will mostly start zinging around the earth in various orbits until they make contact with another satellite, causing more debris. Here, I use the word satellite in it's loosest sense: meaning a conventional communications satellite, or a space shuttle, or a space station, an astronaut on a spacewalk or even the moon itself.
This kind of event would make the orbits unusable for the foreseeable future - it is a real risk even without people blowing things up - and we don't yet have a good solution. Research is focussing on using things like aerogel to trap this kind of debris and bring it out of orbit. As long as you can take more debris out of orbit than is being created, you should be able to prevent a chain reaction. But for the moment there is no solution.