US Commits To Ending Anti-Satellite Missile Testing, Calls For Global Agreement (cnbc.com) 71
The United States government has committed to ending the practice of anti-satellite missile tests, Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Monday, urging other nations to follow its lead. From a report: An anti-satellite weapons, or ASAT, test is a military demonstration in which a spacecraft in orbit is destroyed using a missile system. Countries performing ASAT tests historically have done so by targeting their own assets in space. Plans for the move were set late last year, after the Russian military destroyed a defunct satellite with an ASAT on Nov. 15. The Russian test created thousands of pieces of debris in low Earth orbit, and sent astronauts on the International Space Station into shelter as it passed through the shrapnel field.
During Harris' first meeting in December as chair of the National Space Council, the vice president directed the group to work with other agencies and create proposals that would establish new national security norms in space. The U.S. ASAT commitment, which coincides with Harris' tour of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, marks the first step of that effort. The White House stressed that "the United States is the first nation to make such a declaration" to end such testing.
During Harris' first meeting in December as chair of the National Space Council, the vice president directed the group to work with other agencies and create proposals that would establish new national security norms in space. The U.S. ASAT commitment, which coincides with Harris' tour of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, marks the first step of that effort. The White House stressed that "the United States is the first nation to make such a declaration" to end such testing.
Typical US passive/agressive action (Score:5, Insightful)
Needs to be stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be true, but nevertheless antisatellite weapon testing is horribly stupid and should not be done by anybody.
If you want to keep being able to get access to space, don't do that.
If militaries need to test antisatellite weapons, you can let them go ahead to test all the parts of the system without blowing up stuff in space
Re:Needs to be stopped (Score:4, Insightful)
We can't even agree to work together to stop destroying the earth down here, what makes you think anyone will be able to agree to stop creating a rocket shredder layer up there?
We can and did [Re:Needs to be stopped] (Score:5, Informative)
We can't even agree to work together to stop destroying the earth down here,
We can... and we have.
We implemented the nuclear test ban treaty, [archives.gov] which stopped nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. Because it was damaging the environment.
We stopped spraying chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere. Because it was damaging the ozone layer.
ASAT testing hurts everybody. Yes, we can, and should, stop it.
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You're forgetting one rather important thing there.
That was all 30+ years ago.
I think GP was referring to climate change (Score:2)
I know, it's hard to keep track of all the world ending catastrophes we're largely ignoring. Also, banning nuke testing is kind of closing the barn door so to speak. We've already got nukes powerful enough to end all human life. Heck, even if Russia just set off theirs without any of them making it state side it would still doom us all.
But man, did you see Jeff Bezos' super yacht? I mean the bigger one he needs a smaller super yacht to get to. I sure am glad we have cent
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Note that, as in this case, the nuclear test ban treaty was enacted once the major players had done all their testing needed to validate both their existing weapons and their data models for future weapons...
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Re:We can and did [Re:Needs to be stopped] (Score:4, Informative)
Does that mean it's a good idea to do so unilaterally?
Yes.
It is a good idea for the US to not test ASAT weapons (and to not test them regardless of whether or not other people stop), because if we do test the debris hurts not merely everybody else, but hurts us.
But the headline continues with "...calls for global agreement", and a global agreement is also a good idea.
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Yep, same as nuclear weapons but what the heck, powers keep them anyway, just in case.
But they don't test them in the atmosphere anymore.
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I feel like this conflict set us back decades if not a couple of centuries on that front.
You are assuming that we were making progress. In fact, if some countries were building up weapons for an attack, the situation in the future would be worse than it is now. Imagine if the initial attack by Russia into Ukraine had been fully successful. By now there would be concentration camps all over the country as they have now for deported Ukranians from the east and they would be preparing to attack Germany. Given more years of preparation and testing the Russian army could be fully ready for that.
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Oh, good grief. Why do you think Russians are stupid and suicidal? I've met quite a few of them, and they're neither of those things.
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Oh, good grief. Why do you think Russians are stupid and suicidal? I've met quite a few of them, and they're neither of those things.
What made you think that I thought all Russians are stupid and suicidal? That seems to be a strange thing to take from a comment that Russia would have attacked Ukraine anyway.
Clearly, though, Putin is, who controls Russia, is not a fully rational, reasonable, safe actor. Many people thought he wouldn't attack Ukraine because to do so would be "stupid". He did it anyway.
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Concentration camps and striking Germany?
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Concentration camps [inews.co.uk] - and just to be clear - I am not yet saying extermination or even work camps. When concentration camps started in the Boer war they were supposed to be humane ways of containing the locals. This just has never worked out that way. With his sending of opponents off to Russian gulags, Putin already has form around this.
As far as Germany goes, Putin has already said directly that the Baltics, Balkans and Poland are targets and is moving nuclear weapons into the Baltics (he already has them
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You don't need to blow a satellite up to disable it, that brute-force method causes more trouble than it's worth. A single "smart bullet" into the power controller or comms controller would kill it dead without creating a Kessler Syndrome cloud in the process. I suspect that this is the approach the US has followed, and now that they've tested it a couple of times they want everyone else to agree to stop testing.
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Or satellites whose only design purpose is to piggyback other satellites and force them to deorbit. Avoids the debris problem entirely.
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But it would still create some type of debris field, even if small.
A slightly better, though more technically challenging, way to disable your opponents satellites would be to have a "mothership" of smaller satellites. Those smaller ones would seek out a foreign satellite and push it out of orbit. Either slow it down so it gets dragged into the atmosphe
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I considered that possibility, especially since commercial companies are already building similar spacecraft for station keeping of satellites that have expended their onboard fuel. Unfortunately it's slow, obvious, and if the target has any sort of maneuverability it may be able to avoid capture. A smart bullet is fast, small enough to avoid detection, and the minimal debris cloud would be almost indistinguishable from an onboard explosion of some type so fairly deniable. They also don't need separate l
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But it would still create some type of debris field, even if small.
Cut it with a solid-state laser? If you have the time and accuracy, that unit needn't be large, just very precise.
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Then power becomes your limit. I suppose a bank of supercapacitors could be charged up over time by solar panels or RTG, but then it would take a while before your next shot. The advantage is that you never run out of ammunition.
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Not sure that a laptop battery would power a laser capable of punching through the external skin and then some vital device, but I'm not any sort of expert on lasers.
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More likely* the US already has a better alternative that doesn't require a ground to space attack profile.
*By which I mean definitely
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Once you've tested a few (either publicly or secretly), you do not need to test any longer because you have perfected the technology. At that point you call for a global end to testing, ostensibly for the benefit of all mankind...
Yep. That was my first though, too.
The US has done enough testing, created a huge amount of debris up there, now they want to stop anyone else from doing it.
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Lololol. Yes, how silly of the US to pursue US interests in the world. Oh, and that's a super smart implication re: nuclear weapons, it's definitely in the US's best interests (and the rest of the world's) to be "fair" and let every little shithjole country develop nuclear weapons.
Both your tone and implications are fucking laughable.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that already happen? A long time ago? Can you describe how the fact that we did that (leave aside the debate as to whether that not only saved US lives but possibly Japanese lives had they armed every man, woman, and child with pitchforks and fought to the death) has any bearing on allowing present day shithole countries from developing nuclear weapons they may a) use or b) allow to fall into the hands of terrorists or lunatics due to their instability and inability to se
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Or Israel, which won't even reveal what the command structure for nuclear missile launch might be. India has centralized civilian control, but Pakistan's nukes are under the command of local generals. If those two strike at each other the resulting environmental catastrophe may be enough to initiate a nuclear winter.
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I would be very, very surprised if the number of nuclear nations isn't considerably higher than the official tally. At one time Victor Bout was hawking a former Soviet nuke for only $60 million, and Adnan Khshoggi claimed to be able to get them for customers willing to cough up the dough. Then there's the fiasco of Pentagon accounting, which in the '60s lost count of how many howitzer-launched nukes had been built and deployed to Europe beyond "thousands". I'd be shocked if South Korea and Taiwan both ha
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To be fair, the biggest 2 impact events in the past year were caused by India and Russia, with China close behind.
Preventing people from actually blowing up spacecraft is a really good idea, no matter who starts it.
So the US feels they already have this solved? (Score:2)
It might be hard to convince other nations to agree to this when they know they don't have the capability yet and the US might already have the ability to target satellites.
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I suspect it means the U.S. has it solved with something that isn't a missile. A laser or something else.
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"Smart bullet" tech is well established and my guess as to what was done. Easy to attach to any other satellite, low weight, minimally invasive to the spacecraft's other uses.
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ASM-135, launched from an F-15
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Weasel Words (Score:5, Interesting)
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but you see, the us can't do these things as good as other countries so until someone write an algorithm and start's their own company to do it there is no point in trying...
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In Completely Unrelated News (Score:2)
Israel this week demonstrated their US-joint-effort Iron Dome laser system successfully tracking and destroying missiles and drones.
Hilarious (Score:1, Interesting)
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No, the anti-satellite capability is the important part. The missile part is irrelevant and causes severe long term issues every time it is tested. It is virtually guaranteed that the US at this point has anti-sat capabilities that don't require blowing them apart into a million little bits of space debris. So too do the Chinese.
Of Course They Do (Score:1)
Translation (Score:1)
"We figured out how to shoot down your satellites. Now please commit to not figuring out how to shoot down ours. Who's with us, everybody?"
Does Kamala knows? (Score:1, Troll)
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Does Kamala knows what space or anti or missile or satellite or testing is?
Obviously, Kamala Harris can not know concept that we are teaching in 3rd grade!
What the hell people! Who, at any education level past primary school, does not know what space, missiles, satellite, or testing are?
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This week's talking points appear to be that
1) Biden is senile and may die of a heart attack,
2) Harris is stupid and uninformed and only has her position because of Affirmative Action/Feminism,
3) Pelosi is senile and may die of a heart attack,
4) Repeat through the Chain of Succession until Republican Merrick Garland is finally president.
5) Profit!
Expect to see similar claims in other forums, I already have.
Too late, and not necessarily missiles. (Score:2)
The CCP has robotic anti-satellite snake, for one. [eurasiantimes.com]
They've also already been playing with robot arms in unspecified ways:
Apprehension has been raised that China could employ these space technologies to deactivate satellites from rival countries. The US military has raised alarm about Chinaâ(TM)s anti-satellite capabilities, particularly with regard to Shijian 17, an experimental probe with a robotic arm that performed strange maneuvers after its flight in 2016.
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This solution is far better than blowing up a sat because it wont make space junk.
There is a movie about that... (Score:1)
The Russian test created thousands of pieces of debris in low Earth orbit, and sent astronauts on the International Space Station into shelter as it passed through the shrapnel field.
Ah yes... Gravity... [wikipedia.org]
It's a missle ya know... (Score:2)
It's a missle ya know that fires from a uhm launcher that shoots down other er uhm, missiles
And because Ukraine which is ya know a country in uhm Europe we don't want them.
Russia wants to take out Starlink satellites (Score:1)
The deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation stated that one of Russia's missions is to destroy the Starlink satellites of Elon Musk because of their role in sinking the Moskva cruiser warship.