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Space The Military

A Russian Satellite Appears To Be Shadowing an American Spy Satellite (thedrive.com) 123

"A Russian satellite has positioned itself uncomfortably close to an American spy satellite in orbit around Earth..." reports the Verge, adding that the Russian satellite "has been in constant view of its U.S. target for nearly two weeks now."

An anonymous reader quotes The Drive: Russia has a number of what it calls "space apparatus inspectors" in orbit, which the U.S. government and others warn the Kremlin could use to gather intelligence on other satellites or function as "killer satellites," using various means to damage, disable, or destroy those targets.

On Jan. 30, 2020, Michael Thompson, a graduate student at Purdue University focusing on astrodynamics, posted a detailed thread on Twitter... [H]ow Cosmos 2542 is orbiting now means that it now has a "consistent view" of USA 245. "As I'm typing this, that offset distance shifts between 150 and 300km depending on the location in the orbit," according to Thompson....

One possibility is that it could be using onboard systems, such as cameras or other sensors, to gather information about the [U.S. satellite] KH-11, the capabilities of which are highly classified... It may also be possible to gather electronic or signals intelligence data that could be of additional value. Beyond that, the ability of Cosmos 2542 to get into this position at all is notable and is exactly the kind of orbital maneuvering that the U.S. government had pointed to in the past as evidence of potential "killer satellites." A highly maneuverable, but small satellite could possibly get close enough to disrupt the operation of, disable, or destroy another object in space using a variety of means, ranging from electronic warfare jammers to directed energy weapons, such as a laser...

Russia is known to be interested in anti-satellite capacities and has developed or is developing a number of terrestrial anti-satellite weapons, including ground-based and air-launched interceptors, too. China is pursuing similar developments, as well.


The article points out that is all happening "as the U.S. military is very publicly working to address concerns about the increasing vulnerability of various space-based systems that it relies on heavily... The most obvious expression of this recent push is the creation of U.S. Space Force, an entirely new branch of the U.S. military to focus on American military activities in and related to space, as well as the procurement of satellites and other related systems and infrastructure."

And then late Saturday night, Thompson posted another update on Twitter: that the Russian satellite had made yet another manuever on Friday, "and is now drifting back towards USA 245."
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A Russian Satellite Appears To Be Shadowing an American Spy Satellite

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  • by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @10:40PM (#59683234)

    The satellite is always looking the other way when we look at it. Very suspicious.

    • I just LOLed when I saw the headline.

      It's not like the satellite itself is a secret. What else do you expect them to do? Pretend it isn't there?

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Your honour, I demand injunctive relief from those stalkers, they have constantly been closer than 300km and sometimes even as close as 150km, I demand the entire city of New York be evacuated to maintain my privacy. Whine when it close than 1KM no sooner. Geebus, bitch now, wait until the better satellite launch method starts and you all know what it is. It can launched, so many satellites per hour not so many satellite launches per year, then you will have more reason to whine especially as it is much mor

    • Time to attempt a crazy Ivan [youtube.com]
    • by geirlk ( 171706 )

      In space, no one can hear you whistle suspiciously.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Apparently the Russians just wanted to keep a close eye on the same target that the US wanted to keep an eye on, and determined that the best orbit for them to do so was the same as the orbit that the US determined to be the best.

    They were probably just keeping tabs on something down below, but then someone started gawking and complaining that the Russians are "copying" the US, and the Russians looked around, and lol! There's a covert spy satellite right there! How funny is that?

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The bad nation looks up and tracks 2 nations spy sats looking down at almost the same time?
      That gives them how many hours in the open to get away with their new mil experiments before the USA and Russian mil is back?
      • by irving47 ( 73147 )

        Russia is probably selling said bad nation information regarding the orbit and times the satellite is overhead.

        • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Most bad nations can look up and track everything above them.
          Russian, France, German, GCHQ... US... Russian... NSA, .. CIA. France, EU... German again... all in orbit looking down...
          Its not like US space paint to hide its spy sats worked...
        • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
          If they're stupid enough to pay for info you can get for free [n2yo.com] on the internet, well...
      • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        The traditional solution to that problem is to carry out their secret military experiments indoors.

        • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          But you have to roll out the jet, rocket to test as a nuclear, chemical, biological ready system?
          At some time the jet has to fly, the rocket has to get up into space... the nuclear size, shape and weight .. as a real test...
          Bad nations like to see results for all their spending.
          Cant test it all underground ... or with computers... the new design might wobble in strange ways... best to fix that complex math before a war.
    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      just send up some more satellites, just do the star wars program race all again.

      the russians can't afford to keep up with it. doing stuff like this is just how russians "do more with less". they get the politico effect with the satellite even if the satellite didn't have any instrumentation on it. same thing they do with all of their international meddling. minimum budget maximum political effect.

      or just crash your satellite on it, whatever.

  • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @11:30PM (#59683296)

    [H]ow Cosmos 2542 is orbiting now means that it now has a "consistent view" of USA 245. "As I'm typing this, that offset distance shifts between 150 and 300km depending on the location in the orbit," according to Thompson....

    One possibility is that it could be using onboard systems, such as cameras or other sensors, to gather information about the [U.S. satellite] KH-11, the capabilities of which are highly classified...

    USA 245's orbit ranges from 266 km to 999 km above the Earth [heavens-above.com]. You could probably get better pictures of USA 245 with a really large Earth-based telescope, than you could get from another satellite 150-300 km away. The resolving limit of a 2.4 m telescope (like the KH-11) is about 10-15 cm [wikipedia.org], so will only show you general design parameters.

    The general design of the KH-11 and KH-12 satellites are hardly a secret. They were originally designed to be launched by the Space Shuttle, so their overall size and design is nearly identical to the Hubble Space Telescope. In fact the NRO gave NASA a couple extra mirrors [space.com] from spy satellites thaty they canceled (which should get you wondering what they replaced them with). They're 2.4 meters wide, just like Hubble's.

    So taking long-range pictures of a KH-11 or KH-12 won't really tell you much that isn't already known. More than likely this is for sigint. They're intercepting commands sent to the satellites and data sent back to Earth, possibly so they can try to crack the encryption, probably so then can jam it on demand.

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Monday February 03, 2020 @12:16AM (#59683402)

      More than likely this is for sigint. They're intercepting commands sent to the satellites and data sent back to Earth, possibly so they can try to crack the encryption, probably so then can jam it on demand.

      My money is on this too. America is depending more and more on satellite tech not only for reconnaissance but to control its armed forces and especially the drones. At one point the satellites themselves become the weakest link in the chain. Especially versus another space-going nation.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      US never thought another nation would get between the USA and the US link?
      1. Better encryption was removed to add more advanced spy kit as the link back was secured by the vast distances of space physics?
      Russia is "seeing" what the US is seeing?
      2. The encryption is holding but Russia is tracking the same US look down locations 24/7.
      What the US is looking for, at... and allowing its spy sat to spend time on ... .is now not a secret... in real time.
      They did think to add the encryption upgrade :)
    • The Hubble is a telescope for looking at the stars. A KH spy satellite is the same thing, but pointed at the earth instead.
    • It's well known that the KH telescopes and the hubble have a lot of similar parts... The optics are the special sauce at this point, it's the image processing, etc.
  • Nano satellites (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @11:46PM (#59683334) Journal

    This is going to push the US government into massive arrays of nano satellites, like SpaceX is doing with Starlink. When you have that many satellites, dispersed evenly in orbit, it is vastly more difficult and expensive to try and intercept them with other satellites.

    • by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @11:57PM (#59683348)

      Not all equipment can be reduced to the size of a shoebox.
      And spy satelites tend to carry a lot more fuel to freely move around.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "dispersed evenly in orbit"
      Most advanced nations can see the US and Russian spy efforts in space... so both sats exist and are working...
      Most bad nations will have a list of what is above them and keep their mil stuff hidden for a while per day...
      Unless they have got 24/7 US look down sats on them...
      the very special, extra bad nations...

      Tracking and the ability to guide each system is still within US and Russian mil ability.
      Two spy sats doing spy stuff up near each other in space..
      Both nations
      • There is already a huge risk of space junk colliding, multiplying and making all lowish earth orbits unusable for centuries.

        Large numbers of untrackable nano satellites is just what we do not need.

        Russia, or China, could shut down space easily if push came to shove. Just blow up a few big satellites anywhere in orbit. The space junk will do the rest.

        • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          But what's worth more to a US contractor?
          One huge big powerful hand crafted spy sat per year?
          A set of 300 hand crafted "untrackable" nano satellites?

          Is it like selling the NSA on a set of 3000 home computer CPUs as a lower cost grid "super" computer kit?
          Just buy 10000 more CPU cards as the different math gets more complex ..
          Or rent one extra big super computer to the NSA?

          Expand your own untrackable nano satellite network... just fly up more nano satellites.
          Need more resolution? More nano sat
    • No. Part of starlink is working with us gov. Most likely, a number of these will have extra equipment for tracking, etc.
    • Some types of SIGINT can be done with tiny satellites, but imaging resolution is correlated with the size of the optics so "Keyhole" satellites kind of have to come with a giant mirror. It's possible to make one that folds out or inflates out of a smaller package but so far it hasn't been worth the effort for spy satellites and it may not be that much cheaper.

      The $10B James Webb space telescope will have a segmented mirror about three times bigger than the KH/Hubble that is folded up for the launch. This te

  • Wait (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Monday February 03, 2020 @12:11AM (#59683386)
    So the US thinks it can militarize space and there will be absolutely no consequences? US Space Force ok but Russian satellites bad? Just never forget you're not all alone up there. Russia is not Iraq, Libya or Venezuela.
    • Russia bad, Ivan, Russia bad.

      • Would rather deal with the oligarchs of Russia than the oligarchs of USA *trump*

        USA made its case with its military spending and aggression and the people in the whitehouse/pentagon. Cant say anyone should be surprised if Russia starts doing things like this. There is no detente anymore. Not like either player is sane in this game.

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          BS, Russian never got over WWII. There was no reason to go all commie over their neighbors other than pure paranoia. Putin is no different. He's not the brightest light on the tree.

          • LOL (Score:2, Insightful)

            by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

            Says the country that rolls on a "war is great" banner ever since they convinced themselves they "won" WWII "all alone".

            The country, remember, that at first didn't even want to join the war, because.profits with Nazi Germany were too good, and honestly, racism and nationalism and eugenics and human experiments and concentratiom camps looked all too great. (Not saying Russia didn't like most of that either. Saying you're acting like you didn't.)
            The country, that waited until it was nearly too late... then no

            • Th country waging offensive wars against other countries since WWII *without a single interruption*.
              (Apart from messing with the governments of half the countries on the planet. Including getting fat dancing bear Yeltsin elected. If they really got Trum elected, it would simply be payback. ^^)

            • If you honestly think France and the UK would have handled the Western front without American support, you're completely off your rocker. France was conquered, and the UK was doing well to keep Nazis off their shores (and little else).

              You can hate post-war America if you like. Go right ahead. But don't twist history to the point that it snaps.

            • Now go on, make a joke out of yourself and call me "Ivan".

              "Adolph" is more appropriate, don't you think? After all, if we're going to talk about countries and their war-like tendencies, yours has gotta rank at the top.

              BTY, you're welcome. [marshallfoundation.org]

            • by Anonymous Coward

              This it NOT saying Russia is not evil. It is about saying that YOU ARE.

              Let's see, here we have a triggered German shitting his pants over America's awful behavior in WWII. Jesus, you really don't mind looking like a complete ass, do you? Remind me, how many World Wars is Germany responsible for? Oh yeah, ALL OF THEM.

              I don't know whether to laugh at you or pity you.

    • US Militarizing space, really?

      Soviet ASAT testing - from *1979*

      http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/his... [svengrahn.pp.se]

      Soviet space cannon (mid-70;s):

      https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]

          Grow up.

    • Their counterpart of USAF is called "Aerospace forces". And their most recent anti-aircraft stuff can shoot down low earth orbit satellites as well. But don't let facts to get in the way of a good "orange man bad" story.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Every country thinks it can militarize space. The U.S. doesn't and never had a lock on the concept.

    • While we always appreciate the voices of our Russian counterparts when they're not flooding facebook with apparatchik-approvied disinfo, for the cheap seats it should be clear that the USSR had orbital weaponry - in particular, ASAT weapons - since the 1960s. I expect the US in reality did too (maybe they simply had the capability and didn't loft it, or we just haven't heard about it yet), but the militarization of space has gone on pretty much hand in hand with both space programs since the 1960s.

      Hell, I

  • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @12:30AM (#59683434)

    Considering that US have a robotic fully mobile space vehicle for what seems to be the role of hostile satellite inspection/killing, I imagine Russians had to have a response in terms of relevant capability.

    • I imagine Russians had to have a response in terms of relevant capability.

      Or if not in terms of capability, at least in terms of orbital path.

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

      hostile satellite inspection/killing

      My money is also on "retrieval and return to Earth" too. For those extra special satellites you really don't want the other guy to have, but you really want to have a good peek at. Of course it would really suck if they start putting explosive charges on their satellites that detonate if they sense say, atmospheric pressure...

  • As others have pointed out, this news item is the perfect thing to justify another billion dollar weapons expenditure by the US.

    The underlying antipathy between Russia and the US is nearly 100 years old.

    What I suggest is we need to get a dream team of anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians to begin a project with corresponding groups of specialists in Russia to search for ways to de-energize the antipathy between Russia and the US.

    The last presidential level political effort to stall th

  • KH-11 seems to have missed the whole class about evading our shadowers.

  • How do we know the US sat didn't pull into orbit near the Russian one? This isn't a Hollywood car chase. Just being within whatever distance is important, not "following", whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean when talking about 2 robot satellites in orbit. Is one going to go some place unexpected? Hide in a cloud? Silly stuff being said in that article. Could be any number of things going on. Or just coincidence.
    • How do we know the US sat didn't pull into orbit near the Russian one?

      It's right there in the summary. Because people were tracking these satellites and were both in a similar orbits that passed by every few days and then the russian one made a bunch of manouvers to match the orbit of the us one. Here's the easy version if you can't decode twitter. Click the link at the bottom and you can even read these satellite trackers discussion.

      https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1222990126650994698.html

  • by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @05:17AM (#59683834)

    distance shifts between 150 and 300km

    So if this was on the ground, the russian satellite would be in another country (or state for the USAians). That is not exactly sneaking up behind and giving it a wedgie. Neither is it close enough to "kill" the american spy satellite unless the russians have put a nuke on theirs. Even a shotgun type weapon from 300km would be useless.

    It seems to me that if one side or the other (or the other-other now the chinese have advanced space capabilities) wanted to surveil a satellite, it shouldn't be too hard to give their equipment enough stealth capacity to move unobserved. Radar absorbent coatings and low reflectivity solar panels as Starlink are considering.

    And with everyone having "docking" capabilities, up-close and personal shouldn't be impossible, either.

    • So if this was on the ground, the russian satellite would be in another country (or state for the USAians).

      Maybe if you're living in Luxemburg or something. For me the nearest large city is more than 150km away.

    • It seems to me that if one side or the other (or the other-other now the chinese have advanced space capabilities) wanted to surveil a satellite, it shouldn't be too hard to give their equipment enough stealth capacity to move unobserved.

      Not a bad idea, but there's a problem: Where's the satelite you're driving at? Without being able to track it via radar from the ground you're flying blind. You could put cameras and some kind of space sextant on the craft, but that's added mass, complication, and I don'

      • Where's the satelite you're driving at?

        Well, that's the other side of the coin.

        If "I" wanted to launch a spy satellite, I would try to make it as inconspicuous as possible. I definitely would NOT consider it an advantage to have one so easy to spot that it can be seen from Earth by an amateur observer [universetoday.com]

        Given how old stealth technology is, it is quite reasonable to assume that the _real_ clandestine stuff is already "cloaked". And just like this russian satellite, the owners of visible ones want them to be seen.

  • If they are already too close for any sort of deniability, why not get really close. 20km instead of 200km? Heck, 2km. Should be possible without too much effort, then they would have an even better chance of intercepting communications.

  • What seems to be the problem? The Russians are fully in their right to 'investigate' this US satellite or follow it. It's not like the US comes clean about the satellite in question by saying what that satellite actually does and is capable of (even if they would say, we still have to take their word for it, and if it comes to military we know the US lies a lot (just like the other big nations))..
  • Seriously? You are complaining about "that evil satellite" WHILE talking about YOUR *SPY* satellite in the same damn breath?!?!

    What is your goal here?
    That we think spying is evil? (Ergo: Russian spy satellite = evil & US spy satellite = evil!)
    Or that spying is good? (Ergo: US spy satellite = good & Russian spy satellite = good!)
    Hm?

    Do you think we're *that* retarded?
    Or are *you* that retarded?

    As far as I'm cocerned, one thing is clear in any case: You're Russia. No fuckin' difference. Piece of shit i

  • So you think US is the first with a 'space force'?
    Don't kid yourself, you're just the only ones who announced it publicly.

  • Trump supporters still think Putin is friendly chap, after all he must be, he never released the pee-pee video.

  • It's over 100-200 miles away? Wow. That's too close!
  • by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @08:09AM (#59684110)
    Didn't this happen in one of Clancy's early books?

    Red Storm Rising, I am thinking. Opening move of WW3 in the book, as I recall....

  • Time for the ol' Pick n Roll !

  • ... most excellent US technology doing exactly the same goddam thing?

    That bothers me more than this.

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