Ned Potter is the science correspondent for ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson." He has reported on such topics as space exploration, the human genome and climate change.
RECENT POSTS
- Mars Rover: Stuck in the Mud
- Tranquility Base
- NASA's Ares 1-X Test: The View From Above
- The Yes Men
- The Missing Link -- Not
- Moon Crash Kicked Up Plume After All
- Moon Crash: Where's the Water?
- Green Apple: Firm is Latest to Leave U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Recovery.gov: Your Tax Dollars at Work
- Climate: Power Companies Quit U.S Chamber of Commerce
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
« Previous | Main | Next »
China Blows Up a Satellite
January 19, 2007 5:46 PM
It is no small feat to find a small satellite 500 miles out in orbit, passing overhead at 17,000 miles an hour, and destroy it with a rocket. The Chinese apparently tried it at least three times before succeeding on Jan. 11.
Kudos to Craig Covault of Aviation Week & Space Technology for breaking the story. Some of what he wrote is HERE.
GlobalSecurity.org, the group run by John Pike, a frequent space commentator, has some background material HERE.
I talked to Covault, who said he's a bit surprised at the amount of reaction from around the world. He says China is far from having shown any consistent ability to conduct space warfare, if it ever comes to that.
But Theresa Hitchens, who heads the Center for Defense Information, says "It does show a certain level of capability that I think was a bit of a surprise to most of us in the space community."
She's also concerned about the amount of debris the Chinese test created--300-800 pieces of junk that are at least baseball-sized (i.e., large enough for radar to track), and perhaps hundreds of thousands that are smaller.
"We can't see it, we can't track it--and something as small as a marble can shatter a satellite." Space scientists say this is a big deal; there have already been three known cases in the last 15 years when satellites were disabled by collisions with debris, and there's no way to prevent more.
NASA has a page that shows the paths of civilian satellites; it's HERE. Click on "J-Track 3D" on the left, if you care to download a Java applet, to see a popup of how busy they say orbital space is. (And if you get it to work, click on "Options," then speed it up to 1000x real-time. Interesting to watch.)
I'm curious how big an issue this is outside of east-coast policy circles. Comments welcome.
--Ned
January 19, 2007 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (6)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
More evidence that the space arms race is on, whether we like it or not.
The worrying thing about this is that, by U.S. standards, the weaponry doesn't have to be all that sophisticated to work. A kinetic weapon, such as that supposedly employed in the Chinese attack, doesn't blow up like a bomb; it just smashes into its target. It could be anything from a few hundred plastic pellets, like a shotgun, to a sack of sand.
With theoretical closing speeds upwards of 30,000 mph, it just would't take much for a little cloud of this stuff to do a lot of damage. So China, and others, can afford to put their money into boosters and guidance rather than into warhead research. That makes these weapons more like slingshots: Reliable, inexpensive, and deadly. In this game, you don't need consistency when you can make a lot of them. A few are bound to work. And that's all it takes.
William
Posted by: William | Jan 19, 2007 8:45:25 PM
Once again, many thanks for the interesting links, Ned! I think pretty much everyone knew that the Chinese were developing spacecraft and the capability of spaceflight, it's just surprising that they would be able to do something that our military has consistently had trouble in doing--shooting down a satellite. That's why I think so many people were surprised at this development. "Time" magazine has dubbed this century as the Chinese Century, and it certainly looks as if it will be.
Posted by: chuck | Jan 20, 2007 9:36:03 PM
The Chinese missile incident reminds me of the "Sputnik" episode back in the late 50s. The world went nuts when Russia one-upped us. Well, the Chinese have opened our eyes, but does anyone in Washington really care? It seems that they've given China just about every weapon and economic advantage that we could. Are we trying to kill them with kindness?
When will we learn? Can't we take a lesson from this?
Posted by: Andy | Jan 22, 2007 1:56:59 PM
I forgot to mention in my previous post that William is right about ways to destroy satellites. However, that stuff has a persistence that can't be overcome easily. Once you've got several tons of sand (or nails, or BBs or whatever) up there, that space can no longer be used for anything, like communications satellites or anything else. It makes moon-shots or any kind of space exploration EXTREMELY expensive, if not downright impossible.
Posted by: Andy | Jan 22, 2007 3:19:14 PM
interesting,would this mean 1 instint, either it good to get rid of satelites or the bad.if is so they can shoot it down, if they can ??? s . maybe new technology on the horizon....that would be good for the economy..... new communications ...is to instant, real inexpensive simple... whats had been invented, then is the question.
Posted by: ray | Feb 3, 2007 4:46:29 PM
Is anyone working on a way to clean up the mess that has been made?
Posted by: Dan | Dec 13, 2007 1:33:00 PM
Post a comment
