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The Chinese government seeks strategic advantage in space through attacks on the Western private sector. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force officers Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui Wang argued in their 1999 book, “Unrestricted Warfare,” that to win a war with the United States, China must mass its intelligence, economic, and political resources where U.S. defenses were weakest: its private sector. The book today reads like a plan for the past two decades of non-military warfare waged against the Western private sector by Beijing and its business surrogates. The U.S. government and its allies have recently shown increasing concern about...

This engine concept consists of an electric thruster that is capable of “scooping” scarce air molecules from the tops of atmospheres and using them as propellant. This development will open the way for all kinds of satellites that can operate in very low orbits around planets for years at a time. The concept of an air-breathing thruster (aka. Ram-Electric Propulsion) is relatively simple. In short, the engine works on the same principles as a ramscoop (where interstellar hydrogen is collected to provide fuel) and an ion engine – where collected particles are charged and ejected. Such an engine would do away with...

A pair of low Earth-orbiting demonstration satellites built by Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems for the first time on March 16 detected and tracked a ballistic missile launch through all phases of flight, a Northrop Grumman official said March 22. So-called birth-to-death tracking of a ballistic missile launch had never been done before from space -- and is the most significant achievement to date for the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) spacecraft, said Doug Young, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of missile defense and warning programs. “It’s the Holy Grail for missile defense,” Young said during a media briefing here. [Top...

The first Delta IV Heavy liftoff from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., illustrated the dramatic purge of hydrogen that results in flames swirling around the three Pratt & Whiney Rocketdyne RS-68 Common Core Booster engines that comprise the first stage. The Jan. 20 launch from Space Launch Complex-6 (SLC-6) boosted the classified NROL-49 mission into a highly inclined orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Because it was classified, details on the payload, its orbit and the results of the liftoff were not announced. But United Launch Alliance (UAV) reports, “The pad is in great shape and the rocket performed as the...

Leonard David Senior Space Writer SPACE.com In a unique case of space bumper cars, two pieces of rocket hardware have collided high above Earth. The orbital run-in involved a 31-year-old U.S. rocket body and a fragment from a more recently launched Chinese rocket stage. The collision occurred on January 17 of this year, with the incident happening some 550 miles (885 kilometers) above Earth. That area of low Earth orbit (LEO) has an above-average satellite population density. The American and Chinese space hardware cruised through space in similar orbits at the time of the rear-ender. The U.S. Surveillance Network of...