SpaceX launches U.S. spy satellites from Vandenberg
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UPI ^
| June 29, 2024 | Allen Cone
June 29 (UPI) -- SpaceX launched spy satellites for the United States from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday night. The
Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at the opening of a two-hour window, 8:14 p.m. PDT. The United States' National Reconnaissance Office described the classified mission as "the second launch of NRO's proliferated architecture, delivering critical space-based ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] to the nation." A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, the booster landed on the droneship, Of Course I Still Love You, in the Pacific Ocean. It was the eighth launch...
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Too Many Missing Satellite Galaxies Found....Bringing us one step closer to solving the “missing satellites problem,” researchers at Tohoku University and abroad have discovered two new satellite galaxies.
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Asia Research News ^
| June 28, 2024 | Tohoku University
The position of a newly found dwarf galaxy (Virgo III) in the constellation Virgo (left) and its member stars (right; those circled in white). The
member stars are concentrated inside the dashed line in the right panel NAOJ/Tohoku University ======================================== For years, astronomers have worried about how to explain why the Milky Way has fewer satellite galaxies than the standard dark matter model predicts. This is called the “missing satellites problem.” In order to bring us closer to solving this problem, an international team of researchers used data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) to discover two...
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S-500 Prometheus: Designed To Kill Stealth Jets, ICBMs & Satellites, India & China To Keep An Eye On Russian AD System
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EurAsian Times ^
| 6/23/24 | Anil Chopra
Russia has reportedly moved some elements of its formidable S-500 air defense system to Crimea. After successful Ukrainian attacks on the S-400 missile system, questions are being raised about whether Russia is exposing its still combat-untested, cutting-edge resource by putting it in the possible range of Ukrainian strikes. Russia
is known to have just one active S-500 regiment, comprising just two battalions with two air-defense batteries each. Details of what elements have been moved are not clear. Air-defense systems of this type have several operational components, including command posts, radars, and launchers.
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Watch live: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 20 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg, California
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Space Flight Now ^
| May 10, 2024 | Space Flight Now
Watch live coverage as SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 rocket with 20 second-generation Starlink internet satellites. Liftoff
from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base is scheduled for 9:30 p.m. PDT on Thursday, May 9 (12:30 a.m. EDT / 0430 UTC). The first-stage booster, making its fourth flight, will land on the drone ship 'Of Course I Still Love You' about eight and a half minutes into the flight. The Starlink 8-2 mission includes 13 satellites capable of providing direct to cellphone services. Our live coverage with commentary from Will Robinson-Smith will begin about 30 minutes before launch.
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Satellites can help find and stop methane leaks
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UPI ^
| APRIL 16, 2024 / 11:48 AM | Riley Duren, University of Arizona
Methane plumes are detected by plane at a Georgia landfill surrounded by homes. Photo
courtesy of Carbon Mapper April 16 (UPI) -- Far more methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is being released from landfills and oil and gas operations around the world than governments realized, recent airborne and satellite surveys show. That's a problem for the climate as well as human health. It's also why the U.S. government has been tightening regulations on methane leaks and wasteful venting, most recently from oil and gas wells on public lands. The good news is that many of those leaks can be fixed...
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Russia Warns of Potential Military Strike on SpaceX Satellites
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Yahoo News ^
| 3/20/24 | Victor Tangermann
Russia has accused the United States of using commercial satellite operators for its intelligence efforts — and is threatening to take military action in response. The
news comes days after Reuters released a report earlier this month, detailing a classified contract that SpaceX signed with a US intelligence agency to launch hundreds of spy satellites.
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China to launch 26,000 satellites, vying with U.S. for space power
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Nikkei Asia ^
| January 10, 2024 | Shunsuke Tabeta
BEJING -- China will start building this year its own version of StarLink, a satellite internet constellation using low Earth orbit, with plans of launching some 26,000 satellites to cover the entire world led by state-run companies.Now that the military use of satellite-based communications systems for warfare in such places as Ukraine
and Gaza is increasing, China will set up its own satellite network to compete with the U.S. as a "space power."
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Iran launches 3 satellites into space that are part of a Western-criticized program
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NY Post ^
| Jan. 28, 2024
Iran said Sunday it successfully launched three satellites into space, the latest for a program that the West says improves Tehran’s ballistic missiles. The
state-run IRNA news agency said the launch also saw the successful use of Iran’s Simorgh rocket, which has had multiple failures in the past. The launch comes as heightened tensions grip the wider Middle East over Israel’s continued war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
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Satellites spy remnants of hidden Bronze Age settlement in Serbia
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Live Science ^
| November 20, 2023 | Jennifer Nalewicki
Satellite imagery has revealed a network of more than 100 Bronze Age structures hidden in the Serbian plains.Archaeologists first noticed the remnants of the more than 3,000-year-old enclosures in 2015 while reviewing Google Earth photos of a 93-mile stretch (150 kilometer) of wilderness along Serbia's Tisza River, according to a study published
Nov. 10 in the journal PLOS One...Previously, this area, known as the Pannonian Plain, was thought to be a hinterland not used for Bronze Age settlements. But now, researchers think that this is just one example of the many settlements found across Europe that are part of an...
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Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites are “leaking” signals
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FreeThink ^
| October 30, 2023 | By Steven Tingay
Even in a “radio quiet zone” in outback Western Australia, the satellites' emissions were far brighter than natural sources. VIDEOS
& PICS AT LINK.................. When I was a child in the 1970s, seeing a satellite pass overhead in the night sky was a rare event. Now it is commonplace: sit outside for a few minutes after dark, and you can’t miss them. Thousands of satellites have been launched into Earth orbit over the past decade or so, with tens of thousands more planned in coming years. Many of these will be in “mega-constellations” such as Starlink, which aim to cover...
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Spy satellites reveal hundreds of Roman forts across Iraq and Syria
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American Military News ^
| 10/27/23 | American Military News
A series of declassified satellite images from the Cold War era have revealed hundreds of undiscovered Roman forts in Iraq and Syria. A total of 396 new sites have been identified from the images taken in the 1960s and 1970s, with the findings, published in the journal Antiquity, changing the perception of
how the region functioned. A previous 1934 aerial survey, conducted by French explorer Antoine Poidebard, recorded 116 Roman forts across the region. They were previously thought to form a defensive line against incursions from Arabia and Persia along the Roman Empire’s eastern flank. The latest findings, however, suggest...
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US Space Force creates 1st unit dedicated to targeting adversary satellites
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space.com ^
The United States Space Force has activated its first and only unit dedicated to targeting other nations' satellites and the ground stations that support them. The
75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated on Aug. 11 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. This unit is part of Space Delta 7, an element of the U.S. Space Force tasked with providing intelligence on adversary space capabilities. It'll do things like analyze the capabilities of potential targets, locate and track these targets as well as participate in "target engagement," which presumably refers to destroying or disrupting adversary satellites, the...
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Hacking the Van Allen Belts: Could we save satellites and astronauts by wiping out the Van Allen belts?
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IEEE Spectrum ^
| 02/26/2014 | CHARLES Q. CHOI
The radiation belts around Earth are loaded with dangerous protons and electrons that can damage spacecraft. Now
researchers are launching experiments to see if they can clear away the high-energy particles that pose the hazard by blasting them with radio waves.When humans began exploring space, the first major find was the Van Allen radiation belts, doughnut-shaped zones of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles. The Van Allen belts consist mainly of two rings: The inner belt starts roughly 1000 kilometers above Earth’s surface and extends up to 9600 km, while the outer belt stretches from about 13 500 to 58...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - The Largest Satellites of Earth
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NASA ^
| 12 Jun, 2023 | Image Credit & Copyright: Tianyao Yang
Explanation: What’s that near the Moon? It’s the International Space Station (ISS). Although the ISS may appear to be physically near the Moon, it is not — it is physically near the Earth. In low Earth orbit and circulating around our big blue marble about every 90 minutes, the ISS was captured
photographically as it crossed nearly in front of the Moon. The Moon, itself in a month-long orbit around the Earth, shows a crescent phase as only a curving sliver of its Sun-illuminated half is visible from the Earth. The featured image was taken in late March from Shanghai,...
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U.S. Official Says Spy Satellites Detected Explosion Just Before Dam Collapse
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The New York Times ^
| June 9, 2023 | Eric Schmitt
A senior Biden administration official says that U.S. spy satellites detected an explosion at the Kakhovka dam just before it collapsed, but American analysts still do not know who caused the dam’s destruction or how exactly it happened. (snip) American intelligence analysts suspect that Russia was behind the dam’s destruction, the senior
administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. But he added that U.S. spy agencies still do not have any solid evidence about who was responsible. Seismic data picked up by the NORSAR observatory in Norway also supported the theory there had been...
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Saturn reclaims 'moon king' title with 62 newfound satellites, bringing total to 145
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Space ^
| May 12, 2023 | By Robert Lea
Sorry, Jupiter. Astronomers have discovered 62 new moons orbiting the ringed planet Saturn. The satellite haul brings the planet's total number of moons to over 100 and also means the gas giant takes back the crown as the solar system's "moon king" from Jupiter. Prior to this discovery, Saturn had 83 moons
recognized by the International Astronomical Union(opens in new tab), so the new batch brings the total number to an incredible 145. The discovery marks another milestone for Saturn, with the planet becoming the first world in the cosmos known to be orbited by more than 100 moons. The...
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Highly Maneuverable Chinese Spaceplane Touches Down After 276 Days in Orbit – Craft Docked Several Times With Another Object – May Be Used as Weapon to Target US Satellites
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The Gateway Pundit ^
| May 11, 2023 | Paul Serran
The space is turning into the next frontier for the high-end confrontations between nations. And
in this new battlefield, the ability to target enemy satellites has become a big priority. Recently, documents from the Discord Leak have shed light on this theme, and I wrote about it here on TGP. You can read more in Space War: Chinese Plan To Disrupt Enemy Satellites’ Comms in the Event of Conflict. But this is far from pure speculation, but rather a reality that’s literally orbiting above our heads. Fears have been arising that the Chinese have developed a self-propelled, highly maneuverable Spaceplane...
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Russia's economy is suffering from industrial decline as satellites detect less pollution in the air
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Markets Insider ^
| May 5, 2023 | Phil Rosen
The Russian economy's industrial sector is in decline, according to air-pollution readings from satellites.A Wall Street Journal report showed that the decline may be worse than what Moscow officially reports.Pollution in Russia's industrial regions fell 1.2% in the six months to April, and is 6.2% lower annually.Russia's economy is suffering from an
industrial decline as Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine drags on, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing data from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-5P satellite.
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SpaceX successfully launches 21 new Starlink satellites
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UPI ^
| APRIL 19, 2023 / 7:22 AM / UPDATED AT 11:27 AM | By Clyde Hughes
A vapor trail forms as SpaceX launches 53 Starlink Satellites from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 24. SpaceX
plans to put 21 more satellites into space on Wednesday. File Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo April 19 (UPI) -- SpaceX successfully launched 21 second-generation Starlink satellites into orbit on a blue sky day in Florida that went off with few problems Wednesday. The flight took off at around 10:31 a.m. after a handful of delays but once it left the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station everything appeared to go routinely well. That included the return of...
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Chinese Rocket That Launched Spy Satellites Breaks up Over Texas
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Red State ^
| 03/09/2023 | Nick Arama
The second stage of a Chinese rocket that launched three spy satellites has just broken up this week over Texas, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. Here’s what the Chang Zheng “Long March” rocket looked like taking off from China in June.[🔴China’s 21st launch in 2022] At UTC 02:22 June 23, 3
Yaogan(遥感/RemoteSensing)-35-02 satellites were successfully launched by #CZ2D Y64 rocket in Xichang, Sichuan. This is the 424th launch of Long March rocket family. HD: https://t.co/018SGyq48M pic.twitter.com/0kDtkg7hua— CNSA Watcher (@CNSAWatcher) June 23, 2022The four-ton rocket reentered the atmosphere on Wednesday at 17,000 miles per hour and disintegrated, but it’s only...
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