For the past two years — so far as anyone knows — the US has had a pair of small undetectable satellites working in buddy pairs to inspect and possibly repair its expensive sensors in space. Wired reports:
In June 2006, a Delta 2 rocket launched a pair of Darpa spacecraft into geosynchronous orbit. The stated goal of the “MiTex” (Micro-satellite Technology Experiment) project was to have the 225-kilogram ships inspect each other, while twirling around the planet. Equipped with advanced thrusters, batteries and solar panels, the two tiny satellites were meant to be more maneuverable, and longer-lasting, than almost anything else in its class. For two years — as far as we know — the pair did their inspection pas de deux, tens of thousands of miles up. … Then, the Defense Support Program DSP 23 missile warning satellite failed. It was a major blow because it carried “a sensor package designed to detect whether rogue nuclear powers like Iran or North Korea were conducting secret nuclear tests in deep space,” Covault writes. “That capability [died] with the loss of DSP 23.”
But it gave the MiTex craft a new mission: find out why the 5,000-pound orbiter dropped dead.
The Space Review reported in 2006 that “right now, a pair of mysterious, highly-mobile microsatellites dubbed ‘MiTEx’ is roaming about in geostationary orbit (GEO). Their mission and their capabilities are unknown; even their orbital position is classified.”
Information on the microsatellites themselves is virtually nonexistent. Calls by the Center for Defense Information to DARPA were quickly met with “no comment”, and Space News writer Jeremy Singer’s inquiries also went unanswered. This is peculiar since the DART and XSS-11 missions, both of which tested technology with anti-satellite applications, have already flown. Seeing as these missions were conducted largely within the public eye, one has to wonder what MiTEx is doing that must remain so secret.
But their technical characteristics are interesting to say the least. First of all, they have rockets derived from interplaneterary mission engines which be fired thousands of times, large fuel tanks and powerful solar arrays. Yet they are so small as to be virtually undetectable by radar or visual at their operating altitudes.
The episode provides a glimpse into the highly secret world of information warfare: the capability to send robotic workers to the signal towers in outer space. This is good thing, right? Don’t be silly. It’s evidence of American aggression, something the Obama administration may soon be called on to review.
“One cannot escape the fact that this technology, while potentially extremely useful in diagnostics of sick and ailing birds, also has tremendous potential for ASAT [anti-satellite] missions. It’s stealthy, highly maneuverable, potentially lethal in more ways than one — with potential kinetic, electronic or laser-killing payloads,” Theresa Hitchens, the former director of the Center for Defense Information, tells Danger Room.
The Chinese — who have taken American heat for their own ASAT test — “will complain to the international community,” says Greg Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The argument against developing devices like ‘MiTex’ is that it may precipitate a war in space in which America has the most to lose. What is less frequently pointed out is that a technological enemy could precipitate such a conflict unilaterally anyway, precisely because America has the most to lose. What’s the mission of the small satellites exactly? Who knows. But the truth is out there.
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don’t need to see any more
To know that
I can read your mind
Lightweight microsatellites will be much cheaper to launch than their obese precursors. The idea is to send microsatellites into space in flocks. In this cluster, they would be reprogrammable, able to switch to new tasks when the Pentagon required it. They might be set in linear formation to conduct ground reconnaissance or grouped in a circle to serve as a communications satellite. “It’s like going from a mainframe computer to a network of PC’s,” Das says brightly. “Together, they’d form a larger virtual satellite.” Yet a flock could also be launched with separate missions. One microsatellite might refuel a larger satellite or upgrade its software. Others might scoot about with small on-board cameras to provide live video feeds from space — a capability no nation currently has. As I am escorted into a clean room to the see the first microsatellite under construction, one officer offhandedly confides, “It could also go right up to an enemy satellite and look at it real close-maybe even bump it.”
Think the technology is Buck Rogers nonsense, check out this company’s website -
http://www.bluetronix.net/rd.htm
Moreover, check out Defense Tech’s contribution -
http://www.defensetech.org/
archives/cat_lasers_and_ray_guns
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posted at EB – Monday Feb. 19 10:53, 2007
One can imagine one of these little satellites gently attaching itself – remora-like – to somebody else’s satellite and mucking with its operation in a variety of ways.
“What is less frequently pointed out is that a technological enemy could precipitate such a conflict unilaterally anyway, precisely because America has the most to lose.”
Bingo.
I love your blog but you have had uncharacteristically bad coverage of the Israeli operation in Gaza. You were the “go to guy” on the Russia/Georgia conflict this summer. What happened? Are you just board of the topic? Why comment on relatively “small” issue like this space article while barely commenting on the Gaza issue?
I have to smile at the description of these spacecraft as “micro” satellites, since at about 500 lbs. each, they are huge compared to the earliest efforts of the Space Age.
The incoming Obama adminsitration is against “weaponization” of space, however it is for nimble space systems that can defend themselves against attack, and is for being able to quickly replace damaged assets. Both of these goals bode well for developing reliable, fast-turnaround launch and space systems. I personally find the opposition to so-called “weaponization” as short-sighted however, and hope that the new administration will have the good sense to allow aggressive systems to be developed under so-called “black programs.”
The USSR developed and tested some antisatellite weapons in the 80’s. It consisted of launching a satellite that drove up alongside another one, taking days to renzdevous, and then exploded.
The USAF Miniature Vehicle weapon of the 80’s was quite different. An F-15 launched a missile based on an AGM-69 SRAM rocket motor and a converted antitank weapon. The missile zipped up from below, never attaining orbital velocity, homed in or the target and smashed into it. It destroyed the Solwind satellite, which was a hurry-up test, since Congress was about to forbid such tests before the targets developed for that purpose could be launched. This was said to be very provocative, since unlike the Soviet weapon, the US one could come out of nowhere, a Pop-Up weapon, potentially leaving the victim’s owner wondering whathell happened.
So now the Chinese have tested their own Pop-Up ASAT – and we have our own slide-up-alongside satellite, not even being used as an ASAT – and that is too provocative.
When a couple of YB-17’s intercepted the Italian liner Roma in the mid-30’s to demonstrate airpower capabilities, was that thought to be too provocative? The USN thought so; they made the Army promise to never do that again.
And Jim: The Gaza op has been covered quite extensively here, and there really is not much else to say. Film at Eleven.
Jim, #2, offers an unfair description, I believe. Until Hamas stops waging unilateral rocket war on its neighbor what’s going on now is probably the new Patestinian “normal”. Back to the post.
Neat techie stuff. Thanks for the post.
Obama as President SHOULD want all the levers of power that is possible for himself, including a robust satellite capability, including if it comes to that, anti-satellite capability.
However, Obama himself is NOT interested in being a “strong” President in the mode of TR, FDR, JFK, etc. but rather an agent of “change” who will so weaken the US that it will have no other choice but to submit it’s freedoms and liberties to “world authorities” including of course Muslim ones.
But what can one expect from Obama, who was born and raised a Muslim, and surrounded himself with anti-American radicals at every turn.
What you can say about Obama is this: he’d rather destroy America than be another FDR.
Back in the ’70′s and 80′s, the US Navy developed a technique (chronicled in “Blind Man’s Bluff”) of tapping into Soviet telephone cables by stealthily entering Soviet waters and attaching a recording device to record telephone traffic around naval bases for retrieval and later decryption and study.
Now what if somebody developed a satellite that could attach itself to a foreign geo-synchronous satellite that might carry telephone and internet communications that aren’t routed through the US and …….
Well, who really knows, huh?
One should consider the possibility that these satellites are not small at all. There are many photos on the internet taken of enormous satellites, using a clever technology that corrects for atmospheric distortion.
Jim, I think Wretchard doesn’t want to dignify Hamas by treating Cast Lead as a war. Hezbollah actually came out to fight in 2006.
Anodyne said:
“One can imagine one of these little satellites gently attaching itself – remora-like – to somebody else’s satellite and mucking with its operation in a variety of ways.”
I do aerospace for a living. Years ago some co-workers and I were discussing the best way an astronaut could foulup a Soviet satellite. Simply destroying it would be too obvious (the Soviets would simply replace it and also get seriously pissed off). Fooling with the satellite in an obvious way would be dangerous for the astronaut (Soviet satellites were typically rigged to explosively self destruct). It was suggested that the best way to foul up a bad guy’s satellite would be to attach a long flexible rod (2 meters long) with a vicegrip to the satellite and on the other end of the flexible rod attach a one kilogram weight. After that, whenever the satellite did an attitude adjust, the flexible rod would wag back and worth like a dog’s tail. Controlling the satellite would then be almost impossible. The bad guy wouldn’t realize that his satellite had been sabotaged and instead assume it had a design fault. He’d waste his time trying to fix it rather than replace it with a new satellite.
I do aerospace for a living. Years ago some co-workers and I were discussing the best way an astronaut could foulup a Soviet satellite. Simply destroying it would be too obvious (the Soviets would simply replace it and also get seriously pissed off). Fooling with the satellite in an obvious way would be dangerous for the astronaut (Soviet satellites were typically rigged to explosively self destruct). It was suggested that the best way to foul up a bad guy’s satellite would be to attach a long flexible rod (2 meters long) with a vicegrip to the satellite and on the other end of the flexible rod attach a one kilogram weight. After that, whenever the satellite did an attitude adjust, the flexible rod would wag back and worth like a dog’s tail. Controlling the satellite would then be almost impossible. The bad guy wouldn’t realize that his satellite had been sabotaged and instead assume it had a design fault. He’d waste his time trying to fix it rather than replace it with a new satellite.
I was thinking a satellite with “interplaneterary mission engines which be fired thousands of times, large fuel tanks” could just keep gently nudging the other guy’s satelllite, causing it to eventually run out of fuel readjusting, but your idea is much better. Still, I’d make sure the flexible rod and the 1kg weight were stamped “Made in France” just to be sure…
That would be “Fabrique en France”, but I like the idea.
@10:
“It was suggested that the best way to foul up a bad guy’s satellite would be to attach a long flexible rod (2 meters long) with a vicegrip to the satellite and on the other end of the flexible rod attach a one kilogram weight.”
Nice – pin the harmonic oscillator tail on the donkey! My idea was along the same lines as JMH’s: gently nudge the other guy’s satellite to cause him misery.
“One can imagine one of these little satellites gently attaching itself – remora-like – to somebody else’s satellite and mucking with its operation in a variety of ways.”
Not much need for that. Comms satellites are inherently remotely hackable, and if need be, ridiculously easy to kill.
It would be MUCH more valuable (though admittedly less sexy) to be able to attach remora-like to one of our own satellites and inject it with some fresh fuel….
Updated definition of Brilliant Pebbles: stealthy, highly maneuverable, potentially lethal in more ways than one — with potential kinetic, electronic or laser-killing payloads,” Theresa Hitchens,
Just a thought – if these 225-kg things are too small for radar to pick up, and didn’t we hear long ago that radar could pick up things as small as an astrounaut’s glove (?) – then they must be somehow stealthy to radar in space.
Stealth in orbit, that’s a new one, isn’t it?
15. Tony:
Updated definition of Brilliant Pebbles: stealthy, highly
maneuverable, potentially lethal in more ways than one — with
potential kinetic, electronic or laser-killing payloads,” Theresa
Hitchens,
Just a thought – if these 225-kg things are too small for radar to
pick up, and didn’t we hear long ago that radar could pick up things
as small as an astrounaut’s glove (?) – then they must be somehow
stealthy to radar in space.
Stealth in orbit, that’s a new one, isn’t it?
———————————————————————-
Not really:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/misty.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19357571/
Stealth in orbit isn’t really new. Talking about it might be.
There are a couple factors that actually make it a bit easier to avoid radar detection of satellites.
The wavelengths of radar used to track space stuff are small, so it’s easier to build materials that absorb them. And you can be 99% certain of the direction they’ll be coming from, so it’s not so hard to bounce them off in a harmless direction.
That being said, the solar panels on a typical satellite are HUGE radar reflectors. So again, if you can refuel by some other means, that flag goes away.
But there are other tools besides radar for tracking satellites anyway. IR is a biggy. But the smaller you can make them, the harder it is to track with any method. So tiny ones make a lot of sense.
How about this?
Romulans back-engineered
I like the the idea of preemptive “tail waging”, too. Simply brilliant, brilliantly simple. Reminds me of a moon “rock launcher” (The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress).
jaymaster,
There are other factors that make radar detection of satellites easier:
There is little background noise and no ground scatter
The transmitters can use very high power (USN Deep Space Network uses 1MW CW at ~200 MHz – too low for good radar absorption).
The motion is predictable, so long time integration can be used to significantly increase the SNR.
The motion of the satellites makes ISAR easy, allowing sub-resolution limit imaging.
What about Reborn Robotic Suicide Baby-Bombers?
The Reborning Process
Women Carry Around Reborn Baby Dolls
ABC news, Washington, WJLA: “Many people like to stop and play with newborn babies, but now some adult women are playing house with fake babies. Some women are even going as far as taking day trips with the fake babies to the park, out to eat, and even hosting birthday parties for them. Forty-nine-year-old Linda is married with no children of her own.
Now, she says she feels like a mother because she has Reborns — dolls made to look and feel like the real thing.” Reborns, with a capital R.
For Reborn owner Lachelle Moore, the fake babies fill a void. ‘What’s so wonderful about Reborns is that, um, they’re forever babies,’
In her Kansas City home, Moore even has an elaborate room for the dolls. She organizes birthday parties, bakes a cake and even invites guests.
Air Force Maui Optical Station (AMOS)
Project 4239 Air Force Maui Optical Station (AMOS) is a unique national R&D facility that provides measurement support to government and scientific communities, serves as a test bed for electro-optics and imaging technology, and supports operational space surveillance requirements. Part of the basic operations and support funding for AMOS is provided through this project. Outside user support through other development, measurement and experimental programs from various sources (e.g. SDIO, Intelligence, etc.) provides the balance of the funding. In addition to as primary R&D missions, this site provides critical operational data to Space Command: infrared signature data and compensated imaging data used for space object identification and mission/payload assessment.
4279 HAVE STARE Radar
SPACETRACK is a worldwide space surveillance network (SSN) of dedicated, collateral, and contributing optical, electro-optical, passive RF and radar sensors. The SSN is tasked to provide space object cataloging and identification, satellite attack warning, timely notification to US forces of satellite flyover, space treaty monitoring, and scientific and technical intelligence gathering.
The continued increase in the satellite and orbital debris populations, as well as the increased use of different launch trajectories non-standard orbits, and geosynchronous altitudes, necessitates upgrades to detection and tracking sensors to meet existing and future requirements.
Wide Aperature Ladar
(HIgh Performance CO2 Ladar Surveillance Sensor)
The Air Force Research Laboratory/Directed Energy Directorate (AFRL/DE) via the ALVA (Applications of Lidars for Vehicles with Analysis) program installed in late 2000 a wideband, 12J 15Hz CO2 laser radar (ladar) on the 3.67 meter aperture AEOS (Advanced Electro-Optics System) telescope. This system is part of the Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS), on the summit of Haleakala, Maui, HI. This ladar adopts the technology successfully demonstrated by the first generation HI-CLASS (HIgh Performance CO2 Ladar Surveillance Sensor) operating on the nearby 0.6 meter aperture Laser Beam Director (LBD) and developed under the Field Ladar Demonstration program, jointly sponsored by AFRL/DE and the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command. The moderate power (∼180 watts) HI-CLASS/AEOS system generates multiple, coherent waveforms for precision satellite tracking and characterization of space objects for 1 m2 targets at ranges out to 10,000 km. This system also will be used to track space objects smaller than 30 cm at ranges to 2,000 km.
It is easier to apply radar stealthing material to satellites than aircraft, since aerodynamics are not a factor. That, and the fact they are 22,300 miles up makes them hard to detect.
I think the best thing to use against other satellites would be a shotgun. Most of those things are made out of saran wrap and coathanger wire, with dental floss for stiffening. But a more subtle method would be high voltage electricity, preferably delivered during a solar flare. P78-2 experimented with electric charges at high altitudes and found that a very high voltage can be built up easily and quickly.
As for the offset weight, we have had gyros on satellites go bad and software has been developed and uploaded to enable them to go on flying with only 2 or even only 1 gyro working, so I think we could handle that problem. Not sure if “they” could.
But what everyone wants to shoot down are the LEO birds used for phtot recon. And they are a tougher nut to crack, literally, and practically, and politically.
Another option would be to attach a device that could be triggered at will to disable the enemy’s satellites. That way in the event of hostilities you could, in one move, wipe out the opponent’s capabilities. Effectively they would be blinded and rendered deaf and mute.
Let’s face it, fighting a modern enemy that suddenly cannot spot you, issue orders to his troops or receive battlefield reports would be very much a desired thing. Conversely these orbiters could examine OUR satallites to ensure that no one has done something to them.
Refueling is a real idea, repairs would still be pretty much impossible aside from external components.
The level of secrecy is indeed intriguing.
What if you could attach a device that would allow you to know what someone else was looking at with their satellites? A satellite “bug” so to speak. I would think that could be useful.
Another way to quietly “kill” an enemy satellite would be to sneak up on it and spray some paint on the solar panels.
Or attach to it and use the thrusters to drag it out of orbit. Both killer and target burn up in the atmosphere.
Three things occur to me;
One, how far advanced is the United States in certain areas of technology, REALLY? We are always in fear of falling behind or losing are edge in what we consider an vital area, but then we get hints of things were supposedly capable that make one wonder what is the true outer edge we are exploring but which are truly secret?
Two, for what reason does knowledge of something like this become public? Is it because of a failure of secrecy/security, or is intentional; something meant to be a shot across someone’s bow based on threats of which the public is only dimly aware?
Three, it is remarkable how often any sort of tech edge we possess is decried by certain groups and individuals, Americans included, as naked aggression, almost as if it was an intentional and tactial drag on our capabilities.
Sorry, copy edit:
“One, how far advanced is the United States in certain areas of technology, REALLY? We are always in fear of falling behind or of losing our edge in what we consider an vital area, but then we get hints of things we are supposedly capable that make one wonder; what is the true outer edge we are exploring in the most secret labs we possess?
Weary G asked:
“what is the true outer edge we are exploring in the most secret labs we possess?”
I no longer have access to classified information (quit that side of the profession years ago). However aerospace engineers like to gossip about stuff that they’re not supposed to talk about. There is interesting stuff going on but nothing comparable to the SR-71 appearing in the open back in 1964. Most of the interesting stuff is still described in AvWeek as one would expect. AvWeek has far fewer pages in it than it did in the 1970s.
Hypersonic UAVs are the most interesting thing going on in the Black World. Also they’re trying to do stuff with military lasers but having trouble putting the pieces together. I find it hard to get too excited about this stuff because the enemy who requires killing are the Islamic fascists. What use is a hypersonic UAV with a fancy laser weapon if the bad guy is some foul smelling Islamic fascist with a towel wrapped around his head, armed with a rusty AK-47 and hiding in a cave? To kill that sort of bad guy requires boots on the ground. High tech toys buys you almost nothing against a primitive enemy who fights with IEDs or suicide belts against civilian targets.
If you want to permanently take a satellite out of action without leaving any fingerprints or debris, all you have to do is spray some paint on the Earth and/or star sensors used for attitude control. Most satellites will go into survival mode when they lose attitude lock. Survival mode means all non-essential electrical systems shut down (mission payload) while the people on the ground struggle to regain control. Within hours, the satellite’s internal temperatures will cool down so heaters turn on to keep the propellant lines from freezing. Before long, the batteries are dead and the satellite is a piece of space junk.
To see how strange things get with strategic assets, check out the following related program:
Sometime in the early to mid ’60s, a National Research Council committee on anti-submarine warfare hatched, and allowed to leak, the following idea:
Drop small robotic devices near Soviet submarines as they left base (where we always had patrols). These devices would attach to the submarine. Periodically they would seek out the long trailing wire antenna on the submarine and cut it.
Why?
The committee was tasked with finding ways to prevent Soviet first strike attacks on the US. Their logic went as follows:
1) To make the strike successful (in those days), missiles must be launched from subs near our shores to minimize warning time
2) The submarines carrying the missiles had to be under positive control. The “go” code had to be transmitted by the highest authorities only when it was time to launch. Nobody wanted to hand a sub commander orders to start a global thermonuclear war in 10 or 30 days sailing time!
3) To minimize detection, the submarines needed to stay submerged, with no periscopes, antenna masts or buoys (I hunted submarines in those days from a P-3 Orion, btw). Thus the communication had to be by VLF or ELF. In either case, a very long trailing wire underwater antenna was required to get the radio signal.
4) If their was significant doubt about enough submarines receiving the go signal, the mission would not be launched.
5) The releasing of the information about this program was to create that doubt.
Note: Whether the devices were ever built and deployed was highly classified and probably still is.
esmoore5 – thanks for the pointers, I hadn’t read of Misty before. However, if amatuer astronomers were able to repeatedly find it, and Mike McMillen killed the follow-on program, plus some of the points made by other posters – the idea of truly stealthy satellites (as stealthy as the B-2 or F-22) sounds pretty challenging.
The one problem with microsatellites moving around in orbit is that it takes a LOT of energy to move from one orbit to another, and there is no way to get this energy back. And to accomplish the move, one has to throw something out of the craft (action-reaction) and there is a limited amount of propellent available for the purpose. Ion thrusters might be a solution if you could wait; they produce a little thrust, but they expend much more energy and much less reaction mass. (Momentum, which is what you need, is the product of mass and velocity; energy is half the product of mass and the square of velocity–which is why helicopters have such large rotors.)
35 Larry J: I’ve thought that one way to kill a hostile satellite would be to approach it and spray it with a liquid that would harden on contact and cover the solar panels, camera lenses, etc. Kind of like throwing a net over it.
But spray-painting the Earth or star sensors is probably just as good if not better.
Women Carry Around Reborn Baby Dolls
That is one of the five saddest things I have ever seen…
Society is truly ill.
Jim
What is less frequently pointed out is that a technological enemy could precipitate such a conflict unilaterally anyway, precisely because America has the most to lose.
An analogy: General Foulkes said that Germany was foolish to initiate the use of gas warfare on the Western Front, because the wind usually blew towards them.
The Allies would almost certainly not have used it, if the Germans had not used it first.
As the man who ran much of Britains gas warfare efforts, he ought to have known.
“Micro” at 500 pounds?
The same technology that enables microsats, allows many small launches to rendezvous and add up to a large dose of fuel or resupply. One critical thing about space launch is that the costs are so high.