Doesn’t Pass The Baloney Test
Posted on February 16th, 2008 by blue collar scientistThe BBC is reporting that Russia is claiming that the United States’ plans to “shoot down” an uncontrollable spy satellite in a decaying orbit is a cover for “testing of an anti-satellite weapon.”
“Speculations about the danger of the satellite hide preparations for the classical testing of an anti-satellite weapon,” a statement reported by Itar-Tass news agency said.
“Such testing essentially means the creation of a new type of strategic weapons,” it added.
Russia is wrong. Here’s how you can know this.
- There really is a satellite in this decaying orbit. It is called USA 193, and you can go outside and see it if you want to. Observations have been reported all over the place, there are even pictures to be found, if you go looking, and video of the satellite has been played on the news in the United States, at least. Heavens Above has a page about the satellite that provides information about where the satellite is now, and how its orbit is decaying. As I write, it looks like the satellite just passed south of Anchorage and was probably pretty close to being visible from where I’m sitting.
- If you can see something in the sky, you can measure its position. And if you can do that, you can calculate its orbit. I used to do this every clear night for asteroids. You take a few pictures, measure the asteroid’s position in each, and then do some computations that result in a description of where that asteroid is in space. Calculating the orbit of an asteroid is pretty hard, but there are freeware software programs that will do all the hard work for you. It turns out there are also similar programs that observers of Earth satellites use. So while the National Space Science Data Center has no real information about USA 193, at least one person has put the observations together and calculated an orbit. Orbits for Earth satellites are described in a standard format, and the numbers, called elements, at this page are in that standard format. They can be taken and plugged into SkyMap Pro or Starry Night or almost any other astronomy software to generate observability predictions for the satellite.
- More to the point, you can take those elements and see that, indeed, this asteroid is orbiting in a very low orbit, and indeed, it really will decay and deorbit, probably sometime in March, if nothing is done about it.
In other words, this satellite is not a made-up thing. We can go out and look at it, and we know, for sure, certain things about it, and we know this from our own eyes, our own calculations - in other words, we know this by doing things that any reasonably-well informed space enthusiast can do - specialists and government spooks not needed.
Not only is this satellite not made up, but it is obviously not what you’d use to test an antisatellite weapon. If someone wants to shoot down a satellite in a real war, they’re going to go after surveillance or positioning system satellites in low Earth orbit, or communications satellites in very high orbits. If you look at USA 193, its considerably lower than a standard low Earth orbit. And it is losing altitude at a very high rate - not something you will find a useful satellite - a plausible target - doing.
In other words, this whole thing just doesn’t have the profile of a good antisatellite weapons test. Anyone designing a test, who ended up doing this, instead of putting a target into a standard low Earth or geosynchronous orbit, has come up with a very bad model of real-life conditions.
Not only that, but the reasons that the United States is offering for destroying this satellite make sense. The United States government says that there is hydrazine on this satellite, used as a propellant. This is quite plausible - hydrazine is used on hundreds of satellites, including in thrusters for the Space Shuttle, Russia’s own Soyuz manned spacecraft, and aboard the International Space Station.
The problem with hydrazine is twofold:
- It is very toxic. At quite low concentrations, breathing it causes lung irritation and scarring. At higher concentrations, breathing it causes tremors, convulsions, and death. If it gets in your water and you ingest it, you can add nausea, neurological symptoms, and drowsiness to that list. It’s a carcinogen so it can kill you with a tumor years after exposure. It can damage or destroy your liver and kidneys, and screw up your reproductive organs and cause birth defects.
- Tanks containing satellite fuel have a fairly high probability of surviving re-entry intact. They have large surface areas compared to their mass, and they can slow down very rapidly and fall to earth without burning up in the atmosphere. If that happens in this case, wherever that tank lands becomes a toxic substances dump, without any of the environmental controls or monitoring that real toxic substances dumps have. If that happens to be my backyard, I’d be really ticked off. (Edit to add: The Bad Astronomer points out that Astroprof has an excellent post about hydrazine, if you want to consult it.)
Oh - don’t believe me that fuel tanks can survive re-entry intact? You don’t have to. There are pictures:
That’s from this NASA page, but if you google this topic, there are dozens of examples you can turn up.
So it seems likely that the reasons given for shooting at this satellite are sound - it is full of a very hazardous substance, and poking some holes in it before it comes down will release that substance into space before re-entry. And that’s what you’d want to do if you had a big tank of hydrazine coming down.
Not only that, but there’s no apparent motive for shooting the satellite down if those tanks aren’t full of hydrazine. Hundreds of classified US satellites have de-orbited in the last few years, and none of them were blown up with an antisatellite missile. The main difference? USA 193 was launched recently, and was never able to be controlled. That means its fuel tanks are pretty full. All the other satellites that de-orbited worked properly, and their fuel was empty, or close to it, when it re-entered. It isn’t plausible that the US wants to blow up the satellite to keep secret technology from falling into enemy hands. Of the thousands of satellites with secret technology that have de-orbited since the space age began fifty years ago, hundreds must have landed in cold-war Russia and other places not friendly to the US. Why weren’t any of them “shot down?”
Besides, a smart engineer designs secret components in such a way that they are sure to destroy themselves in re-entry. (And fuel tanks aren’t secrets.)
Finally, there’s one more clue that Russia is promoting baloney on this issue:
“The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the US has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space,” the statement continued.
That’s right, they have an ulterior motive. They have teamed up with China and are badgering the United States to participate in treaty talks to limit or ban space weapons. Russia wants the United States to look like the bad guy (and maybe the US is - I haven’t really thought through an opinion on whether we should be involved in these talks).
I suppose it is worth pointing out that China has actually blown up satellites in viable orbits with advanced antisatellite weaponry that they acknowledged openly they were testing, and to date, the United States hasn’t - and the Russians are teamed up with China. They just want to take advantage of the circumstance to score political points. Otherwise, why would they say that the United States is “creating a new type of weapon,” when China has already has one?
So, what do I believe? I believe there is a secret satellite in a decaying orbit that has hazardous materials aboard and that the United States is going to punch some holes in the tanks containing the materials, and otherwise break up the satellite so that it falls harmlessly to Earth. I think the notion that we’d have to blow up secret technology on the satellite is insane. I think the Russians are just playing politics with their statement. And I think you should go outside and look at USA 193 so you can say you did!
Tags: anti satellite weapon, China, classified, foreign relations, hydrazine, politics, Russia, satellite, spy, treaty, United States, USA 193
March 2nd, 2008 at 3:19 am
I have to disagree on your main point here. The hydrazine was really not a credible reason for this whole exercise.
The effects of the Hydrazine tank would have been very local. Chances that a random passenger aircraft will drop on your head today are much larger than that the tank of USA 193 would have done.
I think the Russians are right, and this was a good “excuse” for testing ASAT/Anti-missile technology.
By the way, no-one ever questioned the satellite itself was real - the Russians neither. The point is that after it failed, it became an ideal target for an ASAT test, as debris from a satellite in such a low orbit doesn’t create a long lasting orbiting debris field. It was there, useless, and ready to use for this ASAT test.
And the USA had done another successful ASAT test before this one, so you are wrong there is saying that before the USA 193 destruction only China and Russia had. In 1985, the USA took down the Solwind satellite with a missile fired from an aircraft.
And yes, of course Russia and China are playing politics here, but so is the USA. What we are seeing here, is a new arms race with some associated cold-war reminiscent strategies.
Reconnaissance satellites are very important in modern warfare. It is known that the Pentagon worries about the safety of their reconnaisance satellites, and the development by notably China of anti-satellite weaponry.
Just as one way of detering Russia from firing ICBM’s at the USA during the cold war was to make clear that such an act would result in ICBM’s being fired at Russia in retaliation, this USA 193 demonstration is probably aimed at being a reminder to others (China) that if US satellites are taken out of the sky, the USA can and will do the same with theirs.