Posted on 03/05/2009 4:58:27 AM PST by RDTF
A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said.
According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a U.S. telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia.
However, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the U.S. satellite involved in the collision was used by the U.S. military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007.
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(Excerpt) Read more at en.rian.ru ...
*Someone* planned it, that I am sure of.
Good ol’ Russian paranoia is alive and well. Maybe the operation was conducted by Mr. Leon Sprague.
Cool. Let them think that.
To quote Captain Ramius in “The Hunt For Red October”:...
“And when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter...”
Right...
And Obama is for American Democracy not a Marxist State Regime...
Yeah right! We can’t reliably hit a missile with another missile just a few miles over the surface, but we planned a sat-to-sat collision that takes place hundreds of miles up?
.
I say that whomever ‘planned’ this should not be playing the lottery .. he used up all his luck.
If it was us, I have a problem with testing on someone else's satellites that we are not at war with unless:
But I hope we have this capability. It worries me to hear politicians talk about not militarizing space, when undoubtedly that will be a very critical battlefield.
>If it was us, I have a problem with testing on someone else’s satellites that we are not at war with...
It has been done before, but most everyone has the attention span of an ant.
It was done by the Soviets - to one of our satellites.
Note the word “Soviet.” - It was not that recent.
They stole lots of US aid to Georgia
That's good enough for me. Test some more!
Ruh Ro
Russians must be posturing to blame the US for any damage resulting from debris.
Look at who we have for president- the Haggler in Chief
do they REALLY think this guy is smart enogh to take down one of their satellites? and why would the commies running US foreign policy want to pixx off the Russians?
D’oh
Doesn't make it right. And I wouldn't hold the current Russian government accountable for everything the Soviets did.
However, as the one poster pointed out they stole a lot of our aid to Georgia. That could justify downing one or more of their satellites.
Yep...we got it.
Frankly, I don't care - I'm simply pointing out that it was done.
And did this “defunct” satellite happen to have something on board that they are refusing to admit, shades of Space Cowboys I think.
How does any Russian sleep at night with that paranoia.
The bird it hit was a decrepit piece of toxic space junk— a strategic radar satellite powered by a radiation-spewing nuclear reactor that was a hazard for any human life to get near it. The Russian bird lost its brains and no longer responded to ground control. (also not mentioned- this radar sat had been put up to keep track of US aircraft carriers)
Now the entire Iridium constellation is vulnerable to the resulting radioactive space debris field. This communications system went bankrupt a few years ago and was put on the market to be picked up by a group of investors for a fraction of what it cost to put up, and promptly secured a contract with the US Defense Department to provide worldwide sat-phone service for our military.
I sincerely doubt that Iridium would benefit by the mess the Russian bird has left us with, or how we could suffer yet more degradation of communications for years to come. Not to mention having the possibility that chunks large enough to survive reentry may pose a severe radiation hazard to any human who later comes in contact with it- for hundreds of years to come.
When the Russians make accusations, it is a fair bet that they are guilty of the offense.
The functioning satellite was OURS. The defunct munition was THEIRS.
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