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Is The US Doing Enough o Engage China In Space Policy?

Tiangong spacewalk Chinese astronauts on a recent spacewalk outside the Tiangong space station. Should the US do more to work with China on topics like human spaceflight and exploration? (credit: Xinhua) Is the United States doing enough to engage with China on space policy? by Mariam Kvaratskhelia Monday, July 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share While Beijing has accused the United States of turning outer space into “a weapon and a battlefield,”[1] it has no less history of doing the same. China has been interested in counterspace capabilities for years now, developing multiple anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, such as ground-based directed energy weapons (DEWs), satellite jammers, and ASAT missiles targeting low-Earth orbit satellites. The principal goal of these endeavors remains “…asymmetrically disrupting U.S. space operations,”[2] and matching or surpassing the US capabilities in space, according to the Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment.[3] While some experts maintain that cooperation with China on space policy should be one of the priorities of the US government, I argue that the latter is doing enough in terms of engagement. Opportunities for cooperation with China are narrow for three principal reasons. First, there is no track record of substantial coordination on space issues with China, and therefore, no history of trust. Second, the US regulatory framework currently in place, namely the Wolf Amendment, already establishes an environment where engagement with China is limited. Third, it is unrealistic to expect that Sino-American cooperation on space policy will soothe general tensions existing between the two nations. The great power competition encompasses virtually every area of the national security policy; therefore, for space partnership with China to bear any tangible outcomes, it must be a part of a greater package of cooperation, not an isolated policy goal of its own. While some experts maintain that cooperation with China on space policy should be one of the priorities of the US government, I argue that the latter is doing enough in terms of engagement. There is a widespread tendency today to vouch for a closer Sino-American engagement on space issues based on the example of the Cold War Soviet-American partnership. The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) is widely regarded as a “catalyst for East-West détente.”[4] Therefore, importing this line of thinking into a discussion about China implies that increased engagement on space issues with the latter will a priori result in a less tense strategic environment. This comparison is flawed for three main reasons. First, there is an argument to be made that during the fall of the Soviet Union, because the country was in a weak position, it was in its own interests to cooperate with the United States. The US, too, benefited from diverting Russian talent and money to shared projects like the International Space Station (ISS), as it meant that Soviets would not work on developing individual military capacities. Second, it must be kept in mind that despite the historical handshake of 1975, Moscow resumed testing ASAT weapons in space shortly afterwards, which more generally suggests that there is no direct correlation between joint projects and maintained trust. Third, the Apollo-Soyuz project set the stage for future space policy dynamics with Russia. This is why we have seen instances like Roscosmos-NASA collaboration even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, despite the general hostility between two countries.[5] The same cannot be said for China: Beijing is not in a weak position, which means that any joint project that the US pursues with China can easily bite back. Additionally, there is no history of Sino-American cooperation on space issues, which in of itself is derived from a lack of trust between the two. China has a record of intellectual property (IP) theft since the 1990s, examples that include Hughes Electronics Corp., Loral Space & Communications, and Lockheed Martin Corp. scandals.[6] More recently, in 2019, a Chinese national was caught smuggling export-controlled components of US technology used in spacecraft.[7] Aside from IP theft, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been working on developing ASAT and precision strike capabilities for destroying satellites in low and geosynchronous orbits,[8] pointing at the fact that “Beijing conceives of outer space as a critical warfighting domain.”[9] Dean Cheng brilliantly notes that China prioritizes “deterrence through space” over “deterrence in space,”[10] which further highlights that, aside from wanting to establish leadership beyond terrestrial limits, Beijing is willing to use space for offensive as well as defensive purposes. All this, combined with China’s overall image as an authoritarian state, creates lack of trust on the part of the US, which is a reasonable ground to not pursue further engagement. The United States’ lack of trust is reflected in regulatory frameworks in place. The Wolf Amendment, introduced in 2011 by former Rep. Frank Wolf, prohibits NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from cooperating with China without prior authorization. This legislation was essentially a precautionary measure taken by the US Congress to mitigate growing risks of China’s IP theft. In one interview, Wolf noted that “China has more to learn from the U.S. than we have to learn from them... So any cooperation would mean they take from us, not that we take from them.”[11] Of course the Wolf Amendment does not mean that there is no prospect at all of NASA working with Chinese counterparts; it simply means that the FBI would have to assess risks of sharing information with Chinese entities prior to authorizing. The space domain does not exist in a political vacuum. To borrow an example from the Cold War again, one can argue that space cooperation did not cause improvement of Soviet-American relations, but vice versa. There is a counterargument to be made based on these restrictions. Some argue that had China been more involved in these US-led international missions, it would have been deterred from establishing its own space station and/or building advanced space capabilities.[12,13] By creating such a polarized space policy environment, opponents say the US could even lose some of its allies and partners to China. But Chinese intentions have been clear to us from the beginning: they are aimed at challenging US leadership in space and achieving a “world-class status in all but a few space technology areas.”[14] It would be irrational to believe that more engagement with China would eradicate Beijing’s existing intentions, or that these intentions stem from a lack of engagement. The question, therefore, becomes: is China willing to cooperate to begin with? Its aggressive space policy and ambitions raise skeptical answers. Another question worthy of addressing involves the intended end goal of more engagement. Some forms of cooperation to deconflict space can be beneficial for short-term and micro-scale objectives, but hoping that it will ease the general animosity between China and the US is shortsighted and unreasonable. Aaron Bateman rightly notes that space activities are not “free of geopolitical machinations” and are “just another vehicle for promoting a state’s interest.”[15] In other words, the space domain does not exist in a political vacuum. To borrow an example from the Cold War again, one can argue that space cooperation did not cause improvement of Soviet-American relations, but vice versa. Competition is its own form of engagement too. The United States is doing enough to engage with China, and bringing space partnership at the forefront of the agenda would be devoid of meaning. In this discussion, it is important that we ask the following questions: Considering Chinese ambitions of becoming the leader in space exploration, is Beijing interested in space policy cooperation to begin with? Would it have to give up on its leadership aspirations and accept a power equilibrium with the US., or even a position of inferiority to the latter? What is either party gaining from this partnership? Taking into account China’s track record of intellectual property theft, in addition to its lack of history of cooperation with the US on space issues, how can the US trust Beijing with joint projects and information sharing? What is the overarching end goal of space policy cooperation, considering that improving broader geopolitical relationships requires addressing a bigger and more diverse set of military and non-military domains? Answering these questions helps draw a cost-benefit analysis, which in case of this paper’s argument skews more towards costs than benefits. The US must focus on advancing its own technological capabilities to ensure zero-sum competition in the years to come, while also eradicating any power vacuums that can potentially be filled by China. References Ed Browne, “China Accuses U.S. Of Turning Outer Space Into 'a Weapon and a Battlefield,'” Newsweek (July 2022). Oscar Glaese, “China’s Directed Energy Weapons and Counterspace Applications,” The Diplomat (June 2022). Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community” (February 2023). Andrew Jenks, “U.S.-Soviet Handshakes in Space and the Cold War Imaginary,” MIT Press Direct (May 2021). The Guardian, “Russians and American share spacecraft despite nations’ enmity over Ukraine” (September 2022). Vernon Loeb, “Lockheed Accused of Giving Data on Rockets to China,” Los Angeles Times (April 2000). Justin Rohrlich and Tim Fernholz, “China is trying to steal military space tech. The US is running stings to stop it,” Quartz (September 2019). U.S. Department of Defense, “2023 Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” (2023). Christopher A. Ford, “Arms Control in Outer Space: History and Prospects,” Arms Control and International Security Papers 1, no. 12 (July 2020), 4. Dean Cheng, “Are we ready to meet the Chinese space challenge?” SpaceNews (July 2017). Jacqueline Feldscher, “Biden space advisers urge cooperation with China,” Politico (December 2020). Makena Young, “Bad Idea: The Wolf Amendment (Limiting Collaboration with China in Space)” Defense 360 (December 2019). Aaron Bateman, “The Prospects for United States–China Space Cooperation are Limited,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June 2023). Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.” Aaron Bateman, “The Prospects for United States–China Space Cooperation are Limited.” Mariam Kvaratskhelia is a recent graduate of Georgetown University's Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program, specializing in transatlantic security, defense and nuclear strategy. She has more than eight years of experience in academic research, writing, and project management.

Cleaning Up The Mess In LEO

Resurs model A model of the Resurs P1 satellite that broke up in low Earth orbit in June. (credit: Vitaly V. Kuzmin CC BY-SA 4.0) Cleaning up the mess in LEO by Jeff Foust Monday, July 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share For a moment, many in the space industry feared the worst. U.S. Space Command reported June 27 that a defunct Russian satellite, Resurs P1, had broken up in low Earth orbit the previous day. One company, LeoLabs, reported that its radars had detected at least 180 pieces of debris from the satellite. The event prompted International Space Station controllers to instruct crews to go into the “safe havens” of their docked spacecraft as a precaution; they were able to return to the station after an hour. The nature of the event led to some speculation that Resurs P1 was the target of a Russian antisatellite test, similar to Cosmos 1408 in November 2021. However, there were no statements from Russian officials or Western intelligence to indicate that any test had occurred. LeoLabs said a week after the event that, based on its analysis of the tracked debris, that the spacecraft suffered a “low intensity explosion” either from a collision with a small, untracked piece of debris or structural failure of the spacecraft itself. “The global space community is running out of time to gracefully transition from the current world of reliable LEO space operations to an environment where mission lifetimes are routinely curtailed due to orbital debris impacts,” McKnight warned. “Taking a look at how it broke up, it looks like a pretty typical satellite age-based failure,” said Dana Weigel, NASA ISS program manager, at a briefing Friday about the upcoming Crew-9 mission. NASA took “very conservative actions” in response to the breakup, including ordering the crews to the safe havens. “We pretty quickly got data and realized it wasn’t a big risk or threat for us.” While Resurs P1 itself appears to have caused little harm, it is a reminder of the growing challenges facing satellite operators in low Earth orbit. An increasing number of satellites, and debris, is in orbit, and both companies and agencies are increasingly sounding the alarm about this growth, with the need for both stricter rules about operations of satellites and efforts to remove some of the most hazardous debris. McKnight Darren McKnight of LeoLabs discusses the threat posed by debris in clusters in LEO at the Summit for Space Sustainablity. (credit: J. Foust) An “apocalyptic” warning One of those warnings came at the latest Summit for Space Sustainability, the annual conference organized by the Secure World Foundation and held earlier this month in Tokyo. That came in the form of an assessment by Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, which he called “apocalyptic.” “The global space community is running out of time to gracefully transition from the current world of reliable LEO space operations to an environment where mission lifetimes are routinely curtailed due to orbital debris impacts,” he warned. That conclusion came from an assessment he did of debris in three clusters in LEO at altitudes of 775, 840, and 975 kilometers. Those clusters include large objects, like upper stages, that in some cases were abandoned in those orbits decades ago. “We've actually been running this experiment since the mid ’70s, mid ’80s,” he said. Each cluster has specific characteristics: the 775-kilometer cluster is the oldest, with a median year of objects being added being 1982. The 840-kilometer cluster has the most massive objects, with an average mass of 3,200 kilograms, while the 975-kilometer cluster has the most large objects, with 350. McKnight’s assessment concluded that there is a 7% chance of there having been a collision in the 775-kilometer cluster by 2024, 5% at the 840-kilometer cluster, but a whopping 26% chance in the 975-kilometer cluster. By 2039, that probability of a collision at 975 kilometers grows to 34%. There have been no collisions in those clusters yet, but his assessment shows it is a matter of time if no action is taken. “These are things that are not one in a million, one in a thousand. These are numbers that are measurable with percentage signs,” he concluded. Any collision between two large objects in those clusters would likely create thousands of pieces of debris large enough to be tracked, posing hazards for anyone trying to operate satellites in or near those orbits. “I’m not saying we’re going to have the Kessler Syndrome,” he said, referring to the runaway growth of debris that could render some orbits unusable, “but we do not have to have the Kessler Syndrome to have a concern that’s going to affect the space economy.” His presentation was the prelude for a panel at the conference about active debris removal. Several technology demonstration efforts are underway to show how it is possible to remove defunct satellites and upper stages from orbit, including the Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration (CRD2) effort by the Japanese space agency JAXA. It awarded a contract to Astroscale for one ongoing mission, Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J), to inspect the upper stage of an H-2A rocket left in LEO, to be followed by a second mission, also led by Astroscale, to deorbit it. But the challenges with active debris removal (ADR) remain as much financial and regulatory as they are technical, including who pays for debris removal and how to handle dangerous debris from other countries. “There is no global consensus on who is responsible and what needs to be removed from orbit,” said Aya Iwamoto, vice president of policy and government relations for Astroscale Japan. “This issue can be very tricky and sensitive sometimes, so I don’t see this issue being resolved any time soon.” “There is no global consensus on who is responsible and what needs to be removed from orbit,” said Iwamoto. “This issue can be very tricky and sensitive sometimes, so I don’t see this issue being resolved any time soon.” Both she and Toru Yamamoto, leader of the CRD2 program at JAXS, also noted the challenge of the business case for ADR despite its importance. Yamamoto said on the panel that he doubted there was a sufficient market for debris removal alone for companies. “I think that the ADR mission should be preferably carried out by private on-orbit servicing companies” that do ADR along with other services, he concluded—the approach Astroscale is taking with other lines of business focused on satellite servicing and life extension. “National programs are very important to get started,” said Chuck Dickey, former deputy general counsel at Lockheed Martin Space and now principal at Three Country Trusted Broker, on the panel, citing CRD2 and a similar project supported by the UK Space Agency. But, he added, “we really need to figure out a way to cooperate to actually make a significant reduction in overall risk.” ADRAS-J A Japanese H-2A upper stage as seen in June by Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft, a precursor to a debris removal mission. (credit: Astroscale) ESA’s assessment This month also saw the release of the annual report on the space environment by ESA. The report noted there are now 35,000 objects in orbit at least ten centimeters across, the usual threshold for tracking. Of those, a little more than 9,000 are active satellites, with the rest being debris. There has been an “exponential growth” in active satellites in the last few years, said Tim Flohrer of ESA’s space debris office during a panel discussion at the COSPAR Scientific Assembly earlier in the month, just before the release of the report. Debris is also growing, but also (fortunately) not at exponential rates. The increase in both active satellites and debris is becoming a challenge for satellite operators, he said, particularly in orbits above 500 kilometers as the number of satellites there grows. “There is a lot of operational burden because handling a close approach with an active object is very much different than handling a close approach with a piece of debris,” Flohrer said, requiring coordination with the other operator. “The highest costs that are not planned in mission operations after the launch is collision avoidance.” “The extrapolation of the current changing use of orbits and launch traffic, combined with continued fragmentations and limited post mission disposal success rate could lead to a cascade of collision events over the next centuries,” the ESA report concluded. The report does show some signs of improvement in efforts to adhere to orbital debris mitigation guidelines, such as deorbiting spacecraft no more than 25 years after the end of their missions. For example, the fraction of rocket bodies like upper stages that perform a controlled reentry has increased from 10% to 60% in the last decade, the report noted. Those changes are welcomed, but ESA argues are not sufficient. “Whereas adoption of, and compliance to, space debris mitigation practices at a global level is noted as slowly increasing, it is of importance to note that the successful implementation is still at a too low level to ensure a sustainable environment in the long-run,” the report states (emphasis in original.) Steps like the increase in rocket body reentries, it noted, was linked to launches that are themselves deploying large constellations. “The extrapolation of the current changing use of orbits and launch traffic, combined with continued fragmentations and limited post mission disposal success rate could lead to a cascade of collision events over the next centuries,” the ESA report concluded. “Based on these findings, among others, there is a growing consensus that stricter space debris mitigation practices need to be implemented globally, and, eventually, remediation might need to be considered.” Zero Debris Charter signing Representatives of a dozen European countries signed the Zero Debris Charter at an event in Brussels in May. (credit: ESA) Zero debris (sorta) ESA has fashioned itself as a leader in space sustainability through its annual report and other measures. That includes spearheading an initiative called the Zero Debris Charter, which calls on signatories to become “debris-neutral” or not leave any debris in orbit by 2030. In May, ESA announced that 12 countries, all either full ESA members or otherwise associated with it, had signed the charter. That was followed in June by 41 companies and organizations. “The Zero Debris Charter signals Europe’s unwavering commitment to be a global leader on space debris mitigation and remediation, fostering collective action of a large community of space actors from all around the world,” said Quentin Verspieren, space safety program coordinator at ESA, in a statement. While ESA is leading the charter, the agency emphasizes that the charter is not ESA’s alone. “This charter is often perceived as an ESA charter, but it is not,” said Holger Krag, head of ESA’s space safety office, at the Summit for Space Sustainability. “It’s a community document established by several players from international organizations, nongovernment organizations, industry, and space agencies.” He said the charter is designed to push signatories to a greater level of space debris compliance that required by existing national laws. “The charter is in recognition of the situation we are in that the existing laws and guidelines are not sufficiently focused,” he explained. “Being an operator ourselves—ESA is an operator of 28 spacecraft—we know that this is not because of ignorance, it’s because of the fact that it is technically difficult to retire a mission, passivate it, and dispose it safely after five or ten years of operations.” The requirements of the charter won’t take effect immediately, Krag said. “We cannot ask for requirements that are not technically fulfillable.” The charter itself is a two-page document, but one with technical requirements for signatories to follow, such as requiring that space objects should be removed from orbit at the end of their missions with a 99% probability of success. “It’s in line with space law and international guidelines, but it goes beyond,” he said. When ESA announced the first set of countries to sign the charter, it raised questions about whether it might conflict with a proposed European Union space law, yet to be introduced after extensive delays. That law is expected to set its own rules about debris mitigation that would apply not just to EU member states but also to companies in other countries seeking to operate in the EU. “I think it’s not either-or,” said Anna Christmann, German federal aerospace coordinator and ESA ministerial council chair, at a briefing after a joint ESA-EU space council meeting in May. She argued there was a role for an EU space law with space sustainability provisions. “But on the other hand, it’s very important that ESA is active on this going forward with, I think, really outstanding standards for zero debris.” The charter is not legally binding, “but ESA has decided for itself that we are following the zero-debris approach in which we make these requirements applicable to all our missions,” Krag said, although those requirements will not take effect immediately. “What we are talking about here is technology to be there. We cannot ask for requirements that are not technically fulfillable.” Notably, the Summit for Space Sustainability took place just days after ESA launched the inaugural Ariane 6. That mission profile included a final burn of the upper stage intended to deorbit it, but a malfunction in the stage’s auxiliary power unit meant that the engine could not relight, stranding it in low Earth orbit. That is, at the very least, an embarrassment for ESA given its focus on space sustainability and zero debris guidelines. Might it become an opportunity, though, to demonstrate active debris removal technologies like what JAXA is doing with Astroscale with the CRD2 program? “It is something that we regret,” ESA director general Josef Aschbacher said in an interview last week during the Farnborough International Airshow. He added that, when the upper stage engine failed to restart for that deorbit burn, controllers decided to leave two reentry capsules, which were to deploy after the burn, attached to the stage: “we did not want three debris units in orbit but instead only one.” ESA has its own project, ClearSpace, to demonstrate the ability to deorbit debris, but that particular spacecraft under development is not designed to handle a large upper stage like the Ariane 6. “We will look into options” for deorbiting the Ariane 6 stage, he said, “but it may be a question of funding, if we can find the extra funding to deorbit it.” However, it’s clear overall awareness of the growing debris problem is changing. Ray Fielding, head of sustainability and active debris removal at the UK Space Agency, recalled at the Summit for Space Sustainability panel that a young girl at a science fair the agency attended wanted to know why there was space junk. “Well, nobody has been cleaning up. We’ve just been leaving it,” he recalled telling her. “She said, ‘You are stupid! You are stupid! Why have you done that? Why have you let this happen?’ She was certainly convinced that space sustainability is important.” Hopefully others will be convinced sooner rather than later. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will

For ISS: To Be Or Not TO Be?

ISS The International Space Station is scheduled to be deorbited around 2030, but some want to instead boost its orbit to preserve it. (credit: Maxar) For the ISS, to be or not to be? by Ajay Kothari Monday, July 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share An op-ed in SpaceNews by Jean-Jacques Dordain, former ESA director general, and Michael D. Griffin, former NASA administrator, recommends postponing the International Space station deorbit decision for now and to leave it in the hands of future generations. It is not just “passing the buck”. This is the right approach, especially with unknown future technology developments that could make this deorbit decision very shor-sighted. And indeed it is. It could be taken to 800-kilometer orbit and just stored as a world treasure with minimal maintenance for one more generation at least… What is the hurry? Rick Tumlinson makes a similar case in another op-ed, also in Space News. As he rightly says, it is indeed a travesty that the ablest space company, SpaceX, is tasked with destroying the greatest space structure. What a conundrum! What a dichotomy! It could be taken to 800-kilometer orbit and just stored as a world treasure with minimal maintenance for one more generation at least, and then let them decide, after new technologies have been developed by then. What is the hurry? As a worst-case scenario, even with no (or minimal) maintenance, it could remain as a dormant historic piece, similar to the recommendation #5 of Tumlinson. It would cost the same to deorbit as to reorbit, or even less as described herein. Another scenario maybe to have government and commercial entities share the cost of maintaining it at 800 kilometers, perhaps as a waystation to the Moon, sort of like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and maybe as fuel depot. At $10,000 per pound to LEO, the 450-ton ISS's value is in its position and velocity. It would be asinine to lose that. The cost of $9–10 billion is perhaps a bean-counter argument, but it’s much worse to lose an incredible historic treasure that should not be measured in dollars and cents. Civilizations are not always built on bean counting. There has to be other considerations or we would not have any national parks, just a takeover by salivating land developers showing large bottom lines. Two flights of Falcon Heavy (FH) with its center stage expended but the side boosters recoveres would cost about $100-125 million each (FH all expendable costing about $150 million as of a 2022 quote.) The payload to LEO capacity of this option is 54 tons. The upper stages that carry no payload but that much additional propellant each instead would have 54 tons of propellant left over in LEO. The upper stage would have to have 50% longer tanks to carry a maximum of about 147 tons and minimum of 133 tons of propellant instead of the standard 93 tons. The mission to LEO remains unchanged. We are willing to spend billions on so many other things, but cannot spend half a billion for this immense national treasure? Let us play the numbers game. Here they are for Hohmann transfer from 220 nautical miles (407 kilometers) and 52-degree inclination that ISS is in to an 800-kilometer orbit with the same inclination as suggested: table The ratio of payload to ISS orbit versus LEO is approximately 58%. Hence we would have 31 tons of propellant left over in the upper stage by the time it reaches ISS instead of the 54 tons mentioned above. As described above, with two flights of Falcon Heavy, we would have 62 tons of propellant in two ten-ton dry weight upper stages. To the 213 meters per second Delta V (TotDelV in the table above) is added a 15% margin for uncertainty to compute the propellant required for the transport from the 407-kilometer ISS orbit to the almost benign 800-kilometer orbit. This is given below for the Merlin 1Dv engine upper stage as it is currently for FH. table The total of 34 tons of propellant needed, shown in the above table, is substantially below the 62 tons available with the two upper stages now attached to appropriate truss points on the ISS (based on the load-bearing strength and center-of-gravity considerations that the author is not knowledgeable about.) The diameter of each upper stage is 3.7 meters, which would be about right for possible points of attachment as shown in the figure below. ISS (ISS picture courtesy NASA) With almost 500 tons of initial mass and 95 tons thrust now throttled down to 40% or 38 tons for each upper stage, the acceleration of the system would be ~0.15 meters per second squared. Studies are needed to determine if this would or would not cause any vibration issues. It needs to be combined with the political will at NASA, National Space Council, Congress, and the White House. One hopes it does so before the point of no return, the Point Nemo. The point is that this is eminently doable and at much smaller cost than what has been quoted for deorbiting and then destroying it, $843 million, with parts thereof sinking at “Point Nemo” in the Pacific Ocean. (Captain Nemo would not agree, and neither would Jules Verne nor multitude of people here on Earth!) One need only see the animation of the ISS assembly to appreciate the incredible effort that went into assembling it in such a hostile, unforgiving environment with astronauts and cosmonauts doing multitudes of EVAs to put the modules together, starting from 1998 with Zarya and Unity. It is and was an astounding effort that should be conserved for many future generations as a source of inspiration, not just the next generation. One can be sure, instead, that the future generations would call us idiots for destroying such a monument. It is not important at this junction as to whether this is done by two Merlin 1Dv engines or many smaller ones of some other potential solution, strategically placed, The Delta V required does not change and nor does the analogous physics. It just says that the answer is within reach. It needs to be combined with the political will at NASA, National Space Council, Congress, and the White House. One hopes it does so before the point of no return, the Point Nemo. Dr. Ajay Kothari is President and Founder of Astrox Corporation, an Aerospace R&D company located in suburban Washington, DC. His PhD and MS in Aerospace Engineering are from the University of Maryland and BSc in Physics from Bombay University. He is Associate Fellow of AIAA and member of AIAA Aerospace Power Technical Committee. He has over 40 professional publications and has been PI on more than 35 NASA and DOD

No Press Coverage For Space?

2018 IAC The IAC is held around the world, such as in Bremen, Germany, in 2018 (above), but only this year has become more restrictive about the media it accredits. (credit: B. Harvey) No more space for the press? by Brian Harvey Monday, July 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share The International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is one of the oldest and best known organizations in the space world, most famous for its annual congresses, which attract up to 10,000 people. It’s also one of the most publicity-hungry, which is why it’s surprising that this year it’s closing the door on the press. Well, some press. “Press” used to be mainly full-time journalists from well-established institutions from Aviation Week and Space Technology to Air & Cosmos to Flight International. But the nature of space reporting is different now. The IAF was set up in 1950 by the British Interplanetary Society (BIS), the Groupement Astronautique Français, and the German Rocket Society. They comprised amateurs and professionals, initially ridiculed as cranks and nutters. That criticism stopped during its eighth congress in Barcelona on October 4, 1957, when, by coincidence, Sputnik was launched. Since then, the IAF grew, attracting industrial, professional, scientific, and promotional organizations worldwide. Its annual congresses move globally, typically in Europe each other year, this year in Milan in October. For the space press, it’s the biggest, most valuable, and important gathering on the calendar. In a large exhibition hall, the big space agencies, like NASA, France’s CNES), Germany’s DLR, and Italy’s ASI, put on displays of their latest designs and models, distribute leaflets, and make officials available for interviews. The Japanese space agency JAXA once displayed asteroid rock collected from the far end of the solar system. The real meat is in the well-illustrated presentations by engineers, scientists, and experts on rockets, satellites, missions, and applications, anything from microsatellites to past history to future technologies. Heads of the space agencies speak. Astronauts come: the congress introduced to the world China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, and first space women, Liu Yang. Indeed, China has often had a major presence, exhibiting full-scale models of its lunar and Mars probes long before anyone else saw them, so it’s a photographic event. It’s also newsy: it is no coincidence that announcements and evolving outlines of future missions (e.g. Mars Sample Return) are made there. With the rivalry between east and west in full swing, American astronaut and NASA deputy administator Pamela Melroy spoke on the Artemis Accords. Press are normally provided with a small room with desks where journalists file their reports. “Press” used to be mainly full-time journalists from well-established institutions from Aviation Week and Space Technology to Air & Cosmos to Flight International. But the nature of space reporting is different now. It’s not just that typewriters and phones have given way to laptops and mobiles, but it has become more diverse. As Jacqueline Myrrhe, publisher of Raumfahrt Concret and editor-in-chief of Go Taikonauts!, put it, “the press landscape of the last decade has undergone profound changes. Most mainstream media do not have any expert journalists for space any more. Freelance journalists and authors have become an indispensable source of high-quality and high-professional content for media, publishers and online media.” And they were welcome… until this year. (Full disclosure: although attending these events since 1999, this writer is one of those not welcome any more.) This is how it works. Journalists normally apply for press credentials far ahead, in this case in May, sending in not only a passport but the one document that matters most, a professional press card, normally issued by a trade union. What’s new is that even if an applicant is acknowledged as a bona fide journalist, that of itself no longer ensures admission. Now the IAF applies “criteria” to decide if journalists should then be admitted, but will not disclose these criteria, making it intrinsically difficult, if not impossible, to argue one’s case. The criteria are known only to the IAF and have never been publicized, despite multiple requests to disclose them. Representations to reconsider have come from writers, authors, publishers, podcasters, political parties, academics, institutes from Europe and the United States, even founder member BIS, but have so far been ignored. The only clue lies in conditions just issued to approved journalists to “encourage” them to “prominently” feature IAF hashtags, logos, and banners of hosts, co-hosts and sponsors, as follows: All publications resulting from the IAC 2024 should prominently feature the hashtags #iafastro and #iac2024. For printed / digital materials you can incorporate the official IAF logo and the official IAC 2024 banner featuring the names and logos of the host, co-hosts, and sponsors of the event. You are cordially invited to the link containing useful materials such as high-quality logos, banners and a brief summary of the IAF. Does the IAF now welcome only journalists who will publicize the organization, including its for-profit commercial sponsors? Journalists go to events to report on what they see and hear, not to do the job of the host’s publicity department. The dangers of favoritism and manipulating the purpose of the press are obvious. But it’s the only clue we have. Now the IAF applies “criteria” to decide if journalists should then be admitted, but will not disclose these criteria, making it intrinsically difficult, if not impossible, to argue one’s case. How widespread are refusals to admit press? We don’t know. The IAF was asked how many journalists had been turned away this year and in previous years, but won’t say. Are some countries preferred more than others? Big, influential states or small ones? Again, we don’t know: the IAF will not give the nationalities of those accepted or rejected, although it knows from the application forms. If these refusals happened in states adjudged authoritarian, there would be uproar (interestingly, there were no such cases documented when the IAF was in Beijing in 2013.) France (where the IAF is based) and Italy (this year’s congress location) are members of the European Union and Council of Europe, which means bound by their laws and conventions. Keeping the press out like this is contrary to the: European Union (EU) Charter of Fundamental Rights; Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights; The new EU Media Freedom Act, which came into effect on April 11 of this year; EU directives and legislation against non-discrimination, for example on grounds of age, gender, disability, nationality, and political belief. It is certain that the issue will be raised in the autumn session of the new European Parliament. The IAF was asked was it familiar with and trained in the application of these laws, and how was the refusal of individuals consistent with anti-discrimination law, but would not say. Key words here are “press freedom” and “media pluralism.” Press freedom sets down the general proposition that press should be let in, included rather than excluded. It’s not as if there is not room for a handful of press among the ten thousand present, or that national security issues are at stake. Jacqueline Myrrhe again: “The participation of freelancers is not financed by media outlets or any other organization, all costs are on the individual freelance expert. Such commitment requires enormous dedication” for attending such conferences. Media pluralism means recognition of media diversity: full-time, part-time, freelance, general, specialized, popular, technical, using a multiplicity of methods: printed, electronic, broadsheet, tabloid, magazine, journal,, and all the new social media (podcasts, websites, Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) Not just hashtag publicists. A final, but intriguing question. Has IAF, unknown to us, introduced security vetting of journalists, the appropriate checking agency being presumably the French government’s Direction Général de Securité Extérieure (DGSE). That might explain some “no” decisions. The IAF would not say if it applied security vetting, or not, which is worrying. Does a blacklist exist? What’s really going on? Brian Harvey is author of European-Russian cooperation in space, from de Gaulle to ExoMars (Praxis-Springer, 2021).

Book Review: Creature Comforts In Space

book cover Review: Creature Comforts in Space by Jeff Foust Monday, July 29, 2024 Bookmark and Share Creature Comforts in Space: Designing Enjoyment and Sustainability for Off-World Living by Samuel M. Coniglio, IV BookBaby, 2024 Paperback, 162 pp., illus. ISBN 979-8-21824-640-2 US$33 In May, the Space Tourism Conference took place just before the start of the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles. The one-day event focused less on the technology of space tourism—spacecraft and space stations—than on the experience, with sessions on entertainment, dining, and space “lifestyle brands.” The session offered a very forward-looking view of people traveling to space, and one not that different from might have been presented 10 or 20 years ago, given the slow pace of progress in commercial human spaceflight. One session focused on creating “creature comforts” for future commercial space travelers: “those hard-to-describe things that make life more enjoyable, have mental health benefits, and are fun!” writes Sam Coniglio in his new book, Creature Comforts in Space. Example of such comforts range from cocktails and hot meals to fluffy towels, sweatpants, and silence. They are, by and large, lacking from spaceflight today but may be essential to a future where more people live and work in space for extended periods. There is very little investment going into these concepts given that utilitarian focus. Coniglio includes some images of toilets on the ISS and asks, “can they design it to look better?” Coniglio examines many of these topics in the book, from cooking to showering to the inevitable discussion of toilets. He approaches the topic from his own interdisciplinary background that includes working as a technical writer for NASA and developing “drinkbots,” or drink-making robots. A decade ago, inspired by NASA astronaut Don Pettit’s creation of a zero-g coffee cup that makes use of surface tension and capillary action, he developed a zero-g cocktail glass using the same principles. (The glass never flew on the ISS, he said, because of skittishness from NASA public affairs about anything that might be associated with drinking alcohol in space.) In the book, he examines the challenges about things we take for granted on Earth, like preparing a meal in a kitchen or taking a shower. Microgravity is perhaps the biggest obstacle, but there are also the constraints of the limited volume and resources available on spacecraft. There are potential ways to deal with those challenges, though, he argues, citing various concepts that include his own designs. One interesting concept is his “shower in the garden” for a shower that includes moss growing in the bottom half of the cylindrical shower: the moss would filter the water, he argues, while providing some psychological benefits. It's unclear when or if any of the concepts he describes in the book would ever be implemented. Creature comforts on the ISS today are limited, with an environment he likens to extreme camping. There is very little investment going into these concepts given that utilitarian focus. Coniglio includes some images of toilets on the ISS and asks, “can they design it to look better?” Right now, there’s no incentive for NASA or its contractors to design the toilets to look better, just to work effectively and reliably. At some point, though, there may be a demand for toilets that both work well and look good, as well as showers, cooking facilities, and more. Commercial space stations proposed for launch in the next decade may still look fairly utilitarian, focusing on the needs of NASA, other government agencies, and corporate users. (Axiom Space, several years ago, did show off designs of the interior of a future space station habitation module developed by Philippe Starck that, at a minimum, look nicer than the ISS.) But, eventually, even corporate researchers will want the option of relaxing at the end of a long day with a nice meal and a cocktail, just like on Earth. A few create comforts will go a long way towards improving the experience for researchers and tourists alike. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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A New Spacesuit Converts Urine Into Drinking Water

Space Outerwear Astronauts onboard the International Space Station sometimes have to get out of their man-made habitat to carry out scientific research or technical repairs – in what are called extra-vehicular activities (EVA). These spacewalks can last up to eight hours, which can be problematic as far as answering the call of nature is concerned. A team of scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College decided to turn this problem into a solution – similarly to the Fremen’s “stillsuits” in Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune,’ they developed a spacesuit that can retrieve urine and filter drinkable water out of it. “Spacesuits as we know them are being reimagined,” the study’s lead author Sofia Etlin told CNN. With the incoming launch of inhabited missions to the Moon, revisiting astronauts’ garments has become a priority, because of the shortcomings in the current versions. Currently, astronauts essentially wear diapers. This has caused them discomfort and “hygiene-related medical events, including urinary tract infections and gastrointestinal distress,” the study reads. In addition, the astronauts’ drink bags are too small for long EVAs. “You’d think in the 21st century, astronauts would not be using diapers,” said Etlin. Etlin and her colleagues designed a model that contains a silicone cup covering the wearer’s genitals. A humidity sensor detects when the astronaut urinates and pumps it into a backpack, where the urine’s components are filtered to only have water left. That water is then pumped again into a drinking bag, with the addition of electrolytes for extra sustenance. The model can treat 17 fluid ounces of urine in five minutes, with an 87 percent efficiency rate. Although there is still room for improvement, the researchers now want to test their invention. “Our system can be tested in simulated microgravity conditions, as microgravity is the primary space factor we must account for,” said senior author Christopher Mason. Correction: In Thursday’s THE WORLD, BRIEFLY section, we said in our “‘From Darkness to Light’” item that Christopher Luton is New Zealand’s prime minister. The prime minister’s name is in fact Christopher Luxon. We apologize for the error. Share this story

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The Vital Role Of GPS Backup Systems

GPS Block II F satellite GPS jamming has become a growing concern in many sectors, including aviation. (credit: US Air Force) Staying on course: The vital role of GPS backup systems by Lauren Miller Monday, July 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) refers to the constellations of satellites that provide position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information to users around the globe. The unique characteristics of GNSS have enabled it to be the PNT solution of choice in a wide range of applications, including Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). Historically, aviation has been inextricably linked with GNSS. It was following the Soviet shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983 that what was then the military-only GPS was opened for civilian use. In 2003, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) developed and launched the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), a Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) for aviation. In 2011, the safety-of-life service of the European SBAS, EGNOS, became available for aviation. These events thus enable a unique analysis of the real impacts of GNSS disruption at two of the largest airports in the world and a test of their resilience. The American Global Positioning System (GPS), the first GNSS and the only one certified for flight, serves key roles at all stages of flight, and has therefore become critical to aviation. For example, GPS, in conjunction with WAAS, allows pilots to land more safely and efficiently, and in adverse weather conditions. GPS also enables higher volumes of aircraft movements, improved traffic management and collision avoidance, and optimised fleet management of ground assets. The reliance on GPS also extends outside certified aviation applications, as aircrew, airport staff, passengers, and cargo freight are often aided by GNSS-enabled services (GPS and the complementary system of Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou.) GNSS is thus a critical enabler to the safe and efficient functioning of aviation in the US and globally. While the economic impact of real-world disruption to airports has not previously been studied, a hypothetical case study of a spoofing event around London’s Heathrow Airport by London Economics in 2021 predicted minimal airside disruption due to existence of backup inputs and GNSS independent systems, but a potentially compounding impact from landside transport disruption. A similar analysis of potential disruption in the US context has not previously been published, but the UK findings can largely be adapted to US airports with some allowances for US-specific practices, such as the push to decommission non-GPS infrastructure and achieve cost savings. In 2022, the USA saw two significant GPS disruptions at Denver International Airport (DEN) and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). These events involved widespread interference of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals in the airspace in the vicinity of DEN on January 21–22, 2022, and DFW on October 17–18, 2022. GNSS is a critical part of navigation, arrivals, departures, and safety-of-life systems onboard aircraft in the US. The loss of such a key system could have severe impacts without suitable redundancies in place. These events thus enable a unique analysis of the real impacts of GNSS disruption at two of the largest airports in the world and a test of their resilience. The cause of the disruptions to GPS At 10:33 pm on Friday, January 21, 2022, an advisory Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) was issued, advising pilots of widespread GNSS disruption in the area around Denver International Airport. The affected area covered a 50-nautical-mile radius around the airport, spanning approximately 8,000 square nautical miles. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have since released a report highlighting some details of the event. The report confirms the event lasted 33 hours and was caused by a source unintentionally emitting an L1 frequency signal that interfered with GPS. This interference impacted flights in the affected region at altitudes up to 36,000 feet, and also suggests the range might have stretched much farther afield, perhaps reaching 230 nautical miles from the interference source. It has not been confirmed whether the L5 signal was affected as well. map (credit: Google Maps) A similar Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) advisory was issued at 4:51 pm on Monday, October 17, 2022, warning pilots of GPS anomalies in the airspace around Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Although original reports of the disruption suggested the event lasted for 44 hours, subsequent research by a group at Stanford University identified a more realistic timeline of significant GPS jamming from 2:21 pm on October 17, to 2:10 pm on October 18, roughly 24 hours. This spanned periods of both high and low flight traffic throughout the day and led to the closure of a runway. The source of interference was never identified, and the disruption ended without the need for intervention. map (credit: John Wiseman (2022). ‘GPSJAM’) The effect of the disruption to GPS No quantifiable effect of the GPS disruption could be observed at either airport, despite the closure of a runway at DFW. For both locations, airside delays, diversions, and cancellations were comparable to the annual average, with no significant difference from the previous week, as shown in the graphs below presenting outbound flight disruptions for both airports during the disruption, alongside those for the week before, the 2023 average, and the 2022 average. chart (credit: Data obtained from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, ‘Airline On-Time Statistics’) chart (credit: Data obtained from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, ‘Airline On-Time Statistics’) Aircraft that lost GPS during approach and landing switched to backup systems such as Instrument Landing System (ILS), Very high-frequency Omni-directional Range (VOR), and Distance Measuring Equipment (DME). The readily available backup systems at DFW and DEN, and the aircraft’s immediate ability to revert to these systems, has preserved value and prevented disruption. For a cautionary tale on what happens in the absence of such systems, one only needs to consider Tartu Airport, the second-largest airport in Estonia, whose only international route (to Finland) was temporarily suspended on April 29, 2024, due to GPS interference and lack of ground-based systems. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the repeated and widely publicized jamming activity in the area has rendered the airport, which does not have backup navigation aids, unusable. To mitigate against the disruption of service arising from the GPS interference, Tartu Airport is reinforcing GPS-independent ground navigation equipment. As shown in Tartu in Estonia, the impact of GNSS disruption on air transport is exacerbated when backup systems are not readily available. Beyond airspace operations, the expectation would be that GNSS applications within or in the vicinity of the airport would be disrupted. Ground equipment in large airports is often GNSS tracked (using GPS and often a combination of Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou), to improve efficiency and ensure the closest set of stairs, tug, or baggage cart is deployed to incoming aircraft. However, as many pilots reported that GPS was restored once on the ground (with only a small minority reporting that issues continued after landing), these ancillary applications are not likely to have observed a loss of GNSS. In theory, activities in the vicinity of the airports would be affected by a loss of GNSS: for example, road transport is reliant on GNSS for optimized navigation and fleet management. A disruption to GNSS could therefore be expected to have a significant impact on traffic navigation and management within the vicinity of interference. If this were to persist for an extended period, the interruption in passenger, aircrew, airport staff, aviation logistics, and freight could be expected to have a cascading effect on airport operations, airline performance, and ultimately the supply chains that are reliant on air freight. In practice, the traffic data on these days between each airport and its two primary neighboring cities shows no sign of increased congestion in comparison to the days leading up to the disruption, as shown below. chart chart Graph of maximum travel times for this route during the disruption and the week leading up to disruption. (credit: Source: map: Google Maps. Travel times: Data obtained using Outscraper.) Along a similar line of discourse, GNSS not only provides navigation systems with the means to deliver accurate routing but also to alert road users to potential hazards. Drivers, particularly those visiting the city, rely heavily on directional guidance and so it is also sensible to expect an uplift in traffic accidents amid a period of GPS loss. However, the statistics of traffic accidents in the cities of both Denver and Dallas over the course of their respective GNSS outages implies that crash numbers were unaffected by interruption in both cases, as demonstrated below. chart (credit: Data was obtained from the City of Denver Open Data Catalog (top) and the Texas Department of Transportation, Crash Records Information System (bottom).) Additionally, there is no evidence on whether L5 was affected by the disruptions. As such, ground-based applications incorporating dual-frequency receivers may have maintained continuity through the use of L5. Conclusion Two instances of GPS disruption at major US airports resulted in no discernible impact on operations. We can deduce two main reasons for this. First, the disruption did not reach the ground level because it was either directed upwards, or buildings and terrain shielded the ground level. Secondly, both airports, alongside smaller neighboring airports, had retained legacy ground-based navigation aids, allowing aircraft to revert to working solutions. As shown in Tartu in Estonia, the impact of GNSS disruption on air transport is exacerbated when backup systems are not readily available. The United States intends to move towards a Minimum Operation Network (MON), which will decommission a lot of the existing infrastructure for non-GPS navigation and leave a minimum viable capacity for non-GPS navigation at a select few airports. MON airports will be spread across the country, ensuring no aircraft is more than 100 nautical miles from one. The impact of GPS disruption on aviation at DFW, DEN, and Tartu advises caution with the move towards MON. First, because the traffic patterns at the largest airports make it extremely challenging to divert to smaller sites with fewer runways and infrastructure. Furthermore, the impact of a more widespread GPS outage (e.g. space weather) would make the increased demand on MON airports from many more locations much more complex to tackle, especially with prolonged disruption. The primary conclusion that can be taken away from the incidents at DFW, DEN, the Baltic, Tartu, and many others, is that alternative reinforcements are fundamental for locations with essential procedures that rely on GPS to operate. The lack of quantifiable impact observed in Dallas and Denver during their respective disruption periods is not representative of the potential impact of these events had alternative means of positioning, navigation, and timing not been implemented at the locations of interference. This investigation was funded by the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation and is based on publicly available information. Lauren Miller is a Research Assistant in London Economics’ Space Team. She advises national governments, space agencies, and private sector organizations on the economics of space. She can be reached at lmiller@londoneconomics.co.uk. London Economics (LE) is a leading independent consultancy with a dedicated team of professionals specialised in the space sector who have delivered over 125 space projects globally since 2008. Our expertise includes market sizing, demand forecasting, business case support, return on investment, strategic insight, competitive dynamics, and due diligence. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

The Threat From Russia and China Signet Sattelites

Yaogan 31 launch A 2021 launch of a set of Yaogan-31 satellites believed to be used for naval reconnaissance. (credit: CASC) The threat from China and Russia’s space-based SIGINT satellites by Matthew Mowthorpe Monday, July 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share China and Russia have extensive space-based sigint capabilities, which can geolocate transmissions from the radars of UK and NATO allies’ navies. This tracking information is then linked to land and naval-based missiles to ensure that they can target the UK and US Navy. China’s space-based SIGINT capabilities China has a SIGINT platform in geostationary orbit, which allows it to cover the hemisphere and can dwell persistently over one location. The first satellite in this constellation, Qianshao-3, was launched in 2015 and is assessed to be no longer operational. However, two further satellites were launched in 2019 and 2021. These satellites are in orbital slots over the Indian Ocean and Micronesia, as shown below. China is particularly concerned about naval activity in the Indian Ocean as it perceives a threat from both the Indian Navy and the US Navy, which traverses towards China from this direction. illustration This graphic shows an estimated collection frequency range of 250 megahertz to 4 gigahertz. The interception of these frequencies enables the geolocation of search radars, microwave communications, cellular communications, and L-band transmissions such as from Inmarsat satellites. A further series of SIGINT satellites is Yaogan-31. This is a triplet constellation that fly in close formation to provide precise geolocation accuracy. The table below shows the launch dates and how quickly China was able to populate the constellation. illustration illustration This diagram demonstrates the orbital formation of the YAOGAN-31 satellites. It has a lead, trailer, and outlier satellite to provide accurate geolocation of targets. The inclination of the orbit of 63.4 degrees enables increased revisit time of Taiwan. Source. China in parallel launched the Yaogan-30 constellation of satellites. This similarly consists of triplet SIGINT satellites, but in a lower inclination. The constellation includes 18 operational satellites. They do not fly in close proximity but instead are spaced apart by 120 degrees to provide more coverage in providing geolocation capability. Yaogan-30 is similar to the Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) used by the US Navy. It is likely that China has copied the frequency collection range of the US NOSS satellites, which operated between 555 megahertz and 10 gigahertz with a geolocation accuracy of two to three kilometers. illustration The Yaogan-30 satellites are spread out in the same plane to enhance the ability to track foreign naval deployments. On September 10, 2023, the Yaogan-40 01 A/B/C satellites, likely SIGINT spacecraft, were launched into an 847-kilometer orbit; C is now at 787 kilometers in the same 86 degree inclination. (Final Frontier Flash – 2023 – ISR University. They are in a precise triangular formation like the Yaogan-31 triplets. This indicates this is a replacement for Yaogan-31 with two satellites maneuvering to higher orbits and the third in a lower orbit. illustration Russian space-based SIGINT satellites Russia has been replacing its older series of SIGINT satellites. This includes Lotos-S series of SIGINT satellites, which is part of the ocean-surveillance satellite system known as Liana. This has been operational since 2014. Liana provides SIGINT for the Russian Navy. Also included in this naval role is Pion. It was launched in 2021 after long delays from 2014 and provides SIGINT-cued synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite capability for the Russian Navy, as discussed below. illustration These are typical orbits for ELINT satellites which are used to detect radar emissions. On June 25, 2021, Russia launched Pion. This is an ELINT and SAR imaging satellite likely capable of guiding Russian Navy missiles to their targets. It is part of the Liana system operated by the Russian military service ground and naval forces. The SAR capability is intended primarily for imaging naval assets. It acts in concert with ELINT sensors to locate and identify naval assets and uses SAR to image the identified asset. Pion will use its SIGINT capability to find a naval asset; once discovered, the SAR system will system will take an image. A SAR satellite alone would be incapable of discovering an asset. illustration This image shows the large SAR antennas combined with the SIGINT cross shaped capabilities. This provides Russia with a potent and unique space-based targeting capability. In 2014 Russia launched a new series of SIGINT satellites based in geostationary orbit which similar to China’s Qianshao-1 series of satellites that provides long dwell times over a fixed point on Earth, and hemispherical coverage. The Russian Olymp-1 satellite has a 15-year lifetime design but has not changed position since the summer of 2022. This could indicate that it has little propellant left for maneuvers. Combined with the launch of Olymp-2 taking over Olymp-1’s mission, it suggests Olymp-1 is non-operational. Olymp-2 launched on March 13, 2023, and is moving around the GEO belt in close proximity to communications satellites. Olymp collects communications in C- and Ku-band. illustration This image shows Olymp-2’s recent maneuvers tracking a Eutelsat communications satellite. It can conduct such proximity operations throughout its lifetime and intercept transmissions from other nations’ communications satellites. At present other nations are powerless to prevent Russia from conducting such operations in space. Conclusion The constellations of SIGINT satellites provide both Russia and China with a focused SIGINT detection capability. The table below is a summary of the operational constellations that are capable of geolocating and targeting naval assets. While this capability is not limited to naval applications, both Russia and China use these systems primarily for naval because ground assets can be better geolocated using other ground assets. illustration Dr. Matthew Mowthorpe currently works in the UK Military Future Programmes at Airbus Defence and Space. Prior to this, he worked at the Ministry of Defence, where he managed the Space Team examining threats to and from Space. Dr Mowthorpe has published in numerous journals on the weaponization of space and notably published the book The Militarization and Weaponization of Space published by Rowman and Little in the US

Snakebit Rover

VIPER NASA’s VIPER rover is all dressed up but now with almost no chance to fly. (credit: NASA) Snakebit rover by Jeff Foust Monday, July 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share At NASA’s Johnson Space Center, a robotic lunar rover sits, effectively complete and ready for environmental testing after years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on it. But it may never fly to space. That is the situation facing the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission. NASA announced in 2019 its plans to develop VIPER, at the time a $250 million spacecraft projected to launch in 2022 to prospect for water ice in shadowed regions of the lunar poles. It was the successor of sorts to Resource Prospector, another NASA lunar rover mission that the agency cancelled in 2018 after concluding it was “too limited in scope” for NASA’s lunar exploration plans. “The projected remaining expenses for VIPER would have resulted in either having to cancel or disrupt many other missions in our Commercial Lunar Payload Services line,” said Fox. “Therefore, we have made the decision to forgo this particular mission.” VIPER became a more sophisticated, but also more expensive, mission. By the time it was formally confirmed in 2021, its cost had grown to $433.5 million, reflecting greater capabilities and a longer lifetime than first proposed as well as a revised 2023 landing date. That did not include the cost of actually getting VIPER to the Moon, with NASA using its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to select Astrobotic’s Griffin lander for VIPER at an initial, additional cost of $199.5 million. Costs for both, though, had increased while schedules slipped. In 2022, NASA delayed the launch by a year to late 2024 and increased the cost of the CLPS task order by more than 50% to $322 million to perform additional testing of Griffin before its launch. The high value of VIPER, relative to other CLPS missions that carried several payloads that in aggregate cost far less, warranted the change, NASA argued. Many scientists were worried, though, about launching mission like VIPER on an untried lander from a startup. Those concerns only grew after Astrobotic’s smaller Peregrine lander suffered a propellant leak hours after launch in January on the company’s first lunar mission, and the first of the overall CLPS effort. Peregrine never made it to the Moon, reentering a week and a half after launch. That alone would further delay the VIPER launch as Astrobotic and NASA looked into the issues with Peregrine and worked to ensure they did not jeopardize Griffin. Last week, NASA said that it expected Griffin to be ready for a launch in September 2025, nearly a year later than previously planned, a date Astrobotic confirmed. VIPER was running into its own problems. At a briefing last week, agency officials said that the rover had suffered supply chain problems stemming from the pandemic. “The delays occurred over and over for several key components,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He described VIPER as a “very dense” rover built from the inside out; many of the components that were affected by the supply chain problems were for interior portions of the rover, delaying its assembly. Moreover, he said the nature of the supply chain problems—a series of small delays versus a single large one—made it harder for the project to manage. “They did a really heroic job working through Covid and then through all the supply chain disruptions that came out of Covid,” he said of the VIPER team, but by early this year he said it was clear that the mission would not be ready to launch this year regardless of the status of Griffin. That drove up the cost of VIPER from $505.4 million, a revised cost NASA set after the launch was pushed back to late 2024, to $609.6 million. That exceeded the baseline of $433.5 million set at confirmation by more than 30%, triggering an agency review on whether to continue the mission or terminate it. In that review this summer, NASA elected to terminate VIPER. “In this case, the projected remaining expenses for VIPER would have resulted in either having to cancel or disrupt many other missions in our Commercial Lunar Payload Services line,” said Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science. “Therefore, we have made the decision to forgo this particular mission.” NASA was making a reference to the sunk cost fallacy in its decision to cancel VIPER: just because the agency had spent so much on the rover already—about $450 million spent to date—did not mean it was worth spending many millions more. Kearns said cancelling VIPER now would save at least $84 million. The agency faced questions, though, from reporters on the call and from scientists in the days following the announcement, about why the agency would cancel a mission whose spacecraft that was already built. Scientists argued that VIPER offered opportunities to characterize water ice in permanently shadowed regions that other missions, both landers and orbiters, will not be able to duplicate for years. Kearns suggested that costs for VIPER were likely to grow beyond that new estimate of $609.6 million because the rover was only now beginning environmental tests. “I will you tell you that in general, spacecraft development system-level environmental testing does uncover problems that do need to be corrected, which would take more time and money,” he said. If VIPER did not launch by November 2025, he said, the mission would have to wait another 9 to 12 months for optimal lighting conditions to return to the landing site at the south polar region of the Moon. That would add to the costs of the mission, forcing more hard choices about CLPS and other projects that might need to be sacrificed for VIPER. “We do want to fly quickly but we also want to make a mission that is more impactful than just the lander itself,” Thornton said of Griffin. NASA’s science program has been facing such hard choices for some time because of an overall budget about $1 billion below earlier projections. This Tuesday, around the same time that Kearns is scheduled to discuss the VIPER decision at the NASA Exploration Science Forum conference in St. Louis, the agency’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee will meet to hear what a recent review concluded could be done to cut costs of both the Chandra and Hubble space telescopes, moved that could result in reduced science from both missions. “My budget challenges keep me up at night,” Fox said last week during a presentation at the COSPAR Scientific Assembly in South Korea before the VIPER announcement. The budget caps put in place for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, she said, meant “we’ve had to make some really tough decisions, almost impossible decisions.” “It is tough, and we’ve had to make some terrible, terrible choices over the last year, and we’ve seen the ripples going through the whole community,” she said. “But, we still have $7.3 billion in FY 2024, and we are grateful for every single penny of that.” Repurposing Griffin While NASA announced it was cancelling Griffin, it is keeping the CLPS task order with Astrobotic for the Griffin lander mission. The question is now what will fly on it. Kearns said that the current plan is to fly a mass simulator, an inert payload with the same mass as VIPER, on the lander. That would turn the mission into a technology demonstration of Griffin itself, showing the ability of a larger lander to deliver payloads that could be of use for future CLPS missions or more broadly for Artemis. NASA looked into flying science payloads on Griffin instead, but noted the lander, designed to serve primarily as a landing platform for VIPER and little more, would need changes to host and operate payloads. “We believe that if we were to ask Astrobotic to make changes like that, it would further delay their schedule,” he said. “It would lead to more cost for the government. It would lead to a delay of the demonstration of a successful south pole landing by the large Griffin lander, which we are very interested in seeing.” Astrobotic will also be free to fly commercial payloads on Griffin. “Now we have an opportunity to potentially put some other things on that manifest,” said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic, in an interview just after the NASA announcement of VIPER’s cancellation. One possibility, he said, is to fly a prototype of the company's LunaGrid power delivery system, which involves vertical solar arrays optimized for working at the south pole of the Moon. “We do want to fly quickly but we also want to make a mission that is more impactful than just the lander itself,” he said, noting that he believed that Griffin could launch next September with a payload of some kind. It has been “a year of tumult and challenge” for the company, Thornton said, with the loss of Peregrine earlier this year. “The VIPER cancellation is “certainly another punch to the gut here, but we’ll roll with it.” The problems with VIPER, coupled with the loss of Peregrine and the off-kilter landing of Intuitive Machines’ first lander, IM-2, in February, have prompted some to reconsider the overall CLPS effort. NASA said it remains committed to the program, with Kearns stating that the next two missions, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and Intuitive Machines’ IM-2, scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of this year, “We and the companies have not yet accrued enough experience to probably understand how to smoothly deliver such a large and sophisticated payload as VIPER to the lunar surface,” said Kearns. Scaling up CLPS to accommodate VIPER, though, may have been premature. He said VIPER required a “large and somewhat unique lander” compared to the smaller CLPS landers, but with the expectation at the time VIPER started that industry would move faster on those smaller landers, building up experience, than what happened. “We originally though in the government that the first landings on the Moon would take place in 2021 and 2022 by CLPS,” he said, but in fact just happened this year. “We and the companies have not yet accrued enough experience to probably understand how to smoothly deliver such a large and sophisticated payload as VIPER to the lunar surface.” There is still a sliver of hope for VIPER: NASA said it will ask for companies and international partners that might want to take over the mission to submit “expressions of interest” by the end of the month. NASA could then hand over the rover to one of them at no cost, allowing them to complete and launch the rover. That, though, would likely require an investment by that new operator of several hundred million dollars to get VIPER itself ready for launch and then arrange for a lander. It’s not clear anyone has both the interest and means to do so. On the sidelines of the Farnborough International Airshow on Monday, Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA, said he was not aware of any interest by his agency in taking over VIPER, either on its own or as a partner with other agencies or organizations. If NASA cannot find any partners, it will scavenge the instruments on the rover to fly on other missions as well as other valuable components. The rest of the rover would then be scrapped, a reminder of how hard it remains to get back to the surface of the Moon. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Book Review-The Challenger

book cover Review: Challenger by Jeff Foust Monday, July 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham Simon & Schuster, 2024 hardcover, 576 pp., illus. ISBN 978-1-982176-61-7 US$35 Nearly four decades later, Challenge remains seared in the collective consciousness of the space community, a reminder of all that can go tragically wrong in space. In seconds, the shuttle was enveloped in a fireball that destroyed the vehicle and killed the seven astronauts on board. But while the conflagration was instantaneous, it was the culmination of decades of decisions that created a flawed vehicle and processes that allowed it to fly unsafely. Higginbotham tells the story expertly, weaving together multiple storylines—of the astronauts and their families, of those within NASA, and those at Thiokol—to show how an accident that seemed unthinkable to the public just before January 28, 1986, was effectively preordained. That’s the perspective offered by Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham, best known for Midnight in Chernobyl, his book on the Chernobyl nuclear accident that took place just months after the Challenger accident. He, he takes a broad view of the forces that, in the benefit of hindsight, made the accident inevitable. That wide scope of the book takes the reader back to the early Space Age and interest in spaceplanes that offered the promise of airplane-like access to space. That promise led to the shuttle program as NASA tried to find its post-Apollo footing in an era of reduced budgets. Those limited resources, though, led to design compromises like the use of solid rocket boosters that would figure into the accident. But, as he described in the book, it was not just technological issues that led to Challenger. There were flawed decision-making processes and even an unwillingness to listen to concerns, like those posed by some at Thiokol about how the O-rings in those solid rocket boosters would lose their effectiveness at cold temperatures. There were close calls with those O-rings and other systems on the shuttle before Challenger, yet NASA marched ahead, trying to ramp up the flight rate and demonstrate what the shuttle had been designed to do. The book itself has few new insights or revelations about the accident and its aftermath. For many readers, the outlines of the story and its details will be old hat. However, Higginbotham tells the story expertly, weaving together multiple storylines—of the astronauts and their families, of those within NASA, and those at Thiokol—to show how an accident that seemed unthinkable to the public just before January 28, 1986, was effectively preordained. The accident was supposed to be a “never again” moment for a chastened NASA, yet it happened again just 17 years later with Columbia. This time, it seems, the lessons learned at a terrible price have been retained with the shuttle safely flying the remainder of its missions along with continued operations of the International Space Station and, more recently, commercial vehicles carrying NASA astronauts to and from the station. For future generations wondering how Challenger happened, Higginbotham’s book will be an excellent starting point about the technical and institutional forces that doomed an orbiter and its crew. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

A New Cave Is Discovered On The Moon

Spelunking on the Moon In a new study, scientists found a more than 330-foot-deep cave on the Moon, the first such discovery confirming their presence. “These caves have been theorized for over 50 years, but it is the first time ever that we have demonstrated their existence,” study author Lorenzo Bruzzone said in a press release. Bruzzone and his colleagues made the finding after re-analyzing data and images collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2010. The cave is located on the Mare Tranquillitatis, a rocky plain where Apollo 11 landed in 1969, and it is visible to the naked eye from Earth. The team believes it was formed millions or billions of years ago when lava flowed on the Moon and created a tunnel through the rock. They are still unsure what lies within the cave and hope that future lunar missions will use ground-penetrating radar or robots to properly map it. Studying the rock inside the cave could unveil extensive geological records about the Moon’s origins and the Solar system. “There are huge opportunities for discovery,” co-author Francesco Sauro told the BBC. The study could also help explore similar caverns on Mars’ surface, the researchers added. But the authors believe these grottos will play an important role in future human-led missions and explorations beyond Earth. The Moon is a harsh mistress because of its extreme temperatures (both hot and cold), radiation from the cosmos and the Sun, as well as runaway meteorites. These fissures will allow spacefarers to set up base inside them to avoid the dangerous conditions on the lunar surface, British astronaut Helen Sharman said. Share this story

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Viewing Aircraft Carriers From Space

carriers Possibly the earliest photo of aircraft carriers taken by a reconnaissance satellite. An American CORONA satellite overflew Norfolk, Virginia, the day after Christmas 1963 and imaged the sprawling Navy base, revealing four aircraft carriers there, including the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise and two World War II-era anti-submarine carriers. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) Carriers from space (part 1) by Dwayne A. Day Monday, July 15, 2024 Bookmark and Share In December 1963, a spy satellite flew high over Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, the largest US naval facility on the East Coast, and in fact the largest naval facility in the world. Peering through a thin layer of clouds, its camera photographed the base facilities and docks and the ships moored there. One day after Christmas, the satellite hit the jackpot, spotting several of the US Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers: three of them at Navy piers and a fourth anchored in the broad James River. One ship was the World War II-era USS Intrepid, one of the venerable Essex-class carriers, now converted to anti-submarine duty. But a short distance away the satellite also spotted the supercarrier USS Forrestal, the first of a large class of ships capable of operating the Navy’s heaviest aircraft. Further out in the James River was Intrepid’s sister ship, USS Randolph, whose crew had for some reason drawn a short straw and were unable to get a berth over the holiday. But the real prize was moored at the same dock as Forrestal, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. The “Big-E,” as she was known, was then the largest warship in the world and had been in service for only two years. The photograph of all four carriers in port proved that they were not at sea, hunting Soviet submarines or projecting power abroad. The photograph of the shipyard was not taken by a Soviet satellite, however, but by an American CORONA reconnaissance satellite, and it may be the first time that aircraft carriers were photographed by a satellite. Throughout the Cold War, satellite reconnaissance by the United States was highly classified and was not even acknowledged by the US government. But over two decades after this photograph was taken, a couple of leaked satellite images of a Soviet aircraft carrier under construction became among the most famous satellite reconnaissance images ever taken, appearing in multiple publications and news stories. Reconnaissance photos of shipyards and port facilities and even carriers at sea were common during the Cold War. And in fact, they remain highly useful tools today, for both the intelligence community and the proliferating community of amateur and professional open source—“OSINT”—intelligence analysts. American flattops and Cold War reconnaissance The United States developed several generations of reconnaissance satellites during the Cold War. CORONA was the first in 1960, and although its cameras were relatively low resolution, they covered a substantial amount of territory in each image. CORONA was joined by GAMBIT in 1963. GAMBIT had a more powerful camera system but covered less territory; an upgraded version began operating in 1966. In 1971, CORONA was phased out in favor of HEXAGON, a massive reconnaissance satellite the size of a school bus that photographed a huge amount of territory at resolution equivalent to the first GAMBIT system. All these early satellites used film, which provided a means of recording large amounts of data quickly but had to be returned to the ground and processed before the images could be seen, resulting in a delay of a few days to possibly weeks from when an image was taken until it was seen by a photo-interpreter in Washington. Recently, Harry Stranger, who regularly purchases and analyzes commercial and historical satellite imagery, acquired many images of American naval bases photographed by American reconnaissance satellites. The Soviet Union was certainly taking similar photos at the same time, although their satellites were not nearly as good as the American ones, and their imagery has never been released. carriers Long Beach was another major naval facility on the US West Coast during the Cold War. This February 1964 photo shows two anti-submarine carriers at their piers and the helicopter carrier USS Princeton in drydock. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) In February 1964, a CORONA satellite photographed the Navy base at Long Beach, south of Los Angeles. During the Cold War the US Navy had large bases on both coasts, many supporting dozens of ships. On the West Coast, aircraft carriers were based in San Diego, Long Beach, San Francisco, and Alameda, California, and underwent maintenance at Bremerton, Washington. The CORONA satellite photographed some of this impressive naval power during its pass over Long Beach: two angled-deck carriers were visible dockside, along with a straight-deck helicopter carrier in dry-dock. At the time, approximately half a dozen Essex-class carriers were based at Long Beach, including attack, anti-submarine, and straight-deck helicopter carriers. The dry-docked ship was probably USS Princeton, an Essex-class carrier converted to handle helicopters and Marines. A sister ship based at Long Beach, USS Valley Forge, had recently put to sea. Valley Forge later served as the filming location for the 1972 science fiction movie Silent Running shortly before the ship was scrapped. The CORONA satellite’s resolution was too low to show the identification numbers on the flight decks of the other two ships at their piers. However, a review of USS Yorktown’s logbook entry for the day when the satellite took the photograph reveals that Yorktown was in port, as was her sister ship USS Bennington, both ships tasked with hunting submarines in the Pacific Ocean. Yorktown later served as the Apollo 8 mission recovery ship. carriers A US Navy aircraft carrier near Hong Kong, which served as a major resupply port during the Cold War. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) In November 1964 and August 1972, American reconnaissance satellites photographed American aircraft carriers moored in Hong Kong, then a major overseas resupply port. carriers USS Randolph, which appeared in the 1963 CORONA image, was photographed at higher resolution by a GAMBIT satellite in 1965. The ship's registry number is clearly visible on the flight deck. Randolph was used as a recovery ship for several Mercury missions. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) In May 1965, a GAMBIT mission photographed two of the same carriers spotted in Norfolk by the CORONA satellite in December 1963. The anti-submarine carrier USS Randolph was at a dock—in the early 1960s, Randolph had participated in Mercury spacecraft recoveries. The GAMBIT also photographed USS Forrestal in dry-dock, undergoing maintenance. In the higher resolution photo taken by the GAMBIT satellite, both carriers’ identification numbers were easily visible on their flight decks. carriers The supercarrier USS Forrestal was also photographed at Norfolk in May 1965. The ship was in dry-dock as the time. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) Most of the time CORONA and GAMBIT satellites photographed targets in the Soviet Union and other “denied territories.” But the reasons to photograph American military facilities included training photo-interpreters about what they were looking at, and using the photos to show military officers who would recognize their own facilities and equipment and therefore better understand reconnaissance satellite capabilities. carriers USS Enterprise is seen here at Norfolk in 1973. The other ship may be USS America. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) In July 1971, the first mission of the new HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite photographed US Navy facilities at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, San Francisco, and Alameda, just across the bay. No carriers were moored at Naval Air Station Alameda on that day, but at Hunters Point both USS Ranger and the older USS Hancock were present. Hancock was one of the last World War II Essex-class carriers to be withdrawn from service, finally decommissioning in January 1976. The ship was occasionally moored across the bay at Alameda, which was the location where some of the starship Enterprise’s crew went to locate “nuclear wessels,” and collect “photons” from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the 1986 movie Star Trek IV. carriers San Francisco was another major naval facility during the Cold War. Here the USS Ranger and the smaller USS Hancock are seen at dockside. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) carriers The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the US Navy's third nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was photographed by a reconnaissance satellite in November 1976 while still under construction. Eisenhower is still in service and recently saw substantial action in the Red Sea. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) In April 1973 and again in November 1976, HEXAGON satellites photographed Norfolk, both the naval base and the nearby shipyard where construction and major maintenance was conducted. By this time almost all of the World War II-era aircraft carriers had been retired and replaced by much larger, multi-role aircraft carriers. The HEXAGON images showed USS America (CV-66), although the other ships are harder to identify and their deck logs are not available in the National Archives. One of the ships in the 1976 images is possibly USS John F. Kennedy, another is possibly USS Nimitz, which had recently entered service as the Navy’s second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Another ship that appears to be undergoing final construction is probably USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which entered service in 1977. carriers USS America and USS Independence were photographed at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1976 undergoing maintenance. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) carriers The carrier USS Ticonderoga served as the Apollo 16 and 17 and Skylab 2 recovery ship. She was decommissioned in late 1963 and is seen at San Diego in April 1974. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) In 1974, a HEXAGON satellite flying over San Diego spotted two aircraft carriers. One, the USS Constellation, was a sister ship of Forrestal, but based in the Pacific. Another, USS Ticonderoga, was an Essex-class attack carrier. Ticonderoga had been the prime recovery ship for the Apollo 16 and 17 missions in 1972, and the Skylab 2 mission in 1973. The ship was decommissioned in late 1973, so by April 1974, when photographed by a HEXAGON satellite, Ticonderoga was most likely being stripped of useful equipment before being sold for scrap a year later. carriers USS Constellation at San Diego in April 1974. The carrier's aircraft have departed prior to the ship arrived at her home port. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) carriers The USS Lexington served longer than her sister ships, eventually becoming the Navy's training carrier. She is seen here in 1982 moored at Mayport, Florida. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) In October 1982, a HEXAGON satellite photographed USS Lexington in Mayport, Florida. Lexington was the last of the Essex-class carriers still in service and used as a training carrier. The ship would continue to operate until the 1990s, when she was retired and eventually became a museum ship in Texas. carriers USS Kitty Hawk was photographed by a HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite in October 1977 heading out to sea from San Diego. The ship had recently been modernized to carry the Navy's new F-14 Tomcat fighter. The distinctive Tomcats were parked at the rear of the flight deck. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) KENNEN and scandal In late 1976, HEXAGON and GAMBIT were joined by a new satellite system known as KENNEN. KENNEN was the first digital imagery satellite and it relayed its images to the ground via a satellite link. This meant that the images could reach a photo-interpreter in Washington in under an hour, but for years the quality of the images was not as good as the GAMBIT, and the amount of territory imaged was nowhere as substantial as the HEXAGON. In 1984, Samuel Loring Morison, an analyst at the Naval Intelligence Support Center outside of Washington, DC, sent three KENNEN images to Jane’s Defence Weekly. The photos revealed a Soviet Union military shipyard in Ukraine. Morison was quickly arrested, tried, and sent to prison. (See “Flattops from space: the once (and future?) meme of photographing aircraft carriers from orbit,” The Space Review, July 19, 2021.) His leak revealed to the world some of the capabilities of the KENNEN satellite, although by this time the Soviet Union knew a lot more about it because another American had sold them a KENNEN technical manual. carriers The Mykolaiv shipyard in Ukraine was photographed by an American HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite in September 1977. A Moscow-class helicopter carrier, used to hunt American submarines, was at dock. Also present was the second Kiev-class aircraft carrier Minsk, in late stages of construction. A nearby dry-dock contained the third ship in the class, the Novorossiysk. Minsk entered service in 1978, Novorossiysk in 1982, and the fourth ship in the class took ten years to build and did not enter service until 1987. This same dry-dock was used for construction of the larger carrier Kuznetsov. In 1984, a US naval analyst leaked satellite photos of Kuznetsov under construction and was arrested and imprisoned. (credit: NRO via Harry Stranger) Although substantial information about the decision to build the KENNEN satellites has been declassified, no more historical KENNEN images have been declassified. We can assume, however, that the satellites of this series photographed many Soviet warships under construction. The photos that Morrison leaked in 1984 were of course not the first satellite reconnaissance photos taken of that shipyard. CORONA satellites had photographed it, as did later GAMBIT and HEXAGON missions. In September 1977, a HEXAGON satellite flew over the same Mykolaiv shipyard and photographed several targets of interest to the American intelligence community. One was a Moscow-class helicopter carrier at pier side. The two Moscow-class ships carried helicopters and were tasked with hunting American submarines in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. They were notoriously unstable, however, and a photograph of one in heavy seas shows the ship rolling severely to one side. Their crews must have been miserable. The helicopter carrier was well known to the US Navy by this time. But two other targets in the shipyard were probably of greater interest to intelligence analysts. Docked perpendicular to the helicopter carrier was the second Kiev-class aircraft carrier, named Minsk. The Soviet Union had a penchant for building ships unlike those in any other navy, and the Kievs were a perfect example. They were equipped with vertical take-off and landing fighter jets like the famed British Harrier—although much less capable—as well as anti-submarine helicopters. But they were also equipped with large anti-ship missiles at their bow, giving them a distinct look. Officially, the Kievs were designated “heavy aviation cruisers,” which allowed them to pass through the Turkish Straits without violating a treaty that prohibited aircraft carriers heavier than 15,000 tons from transiting the Straits. In the HEXAGON image, Minsk’s flight deck was covered with construction equipment indicating that it was unfinished. Minsk would not enter service for another year. Nearby, in a construction dock, another large ship was being built. Astute photo-interpreters would have noticed the resemblance between that ship and both Minsk and Kiev, which had been built in the same dock. That ship would eventually be named Novorossiysk. Kiev took five and a half years to build, Minsk nearly six years, but Novorossiysk would take seven years and would not enter service until September 1982. These increasing construction times were certainly noticed by American intelligence analysts. After Novorossiysk left the dock in 1978, the shipyard would begin construction of the fourth and final ship in the class, initially named Baku and eventually renamed Admiral Gorshkov. Gorshkov took nearly ten years to complete and did not enter service until 1987. That ship, now heavily modified and renamed, serves in the Indian Navy. When Baku/Gorshkov left the dry-dock in early 1982, the Soviet Union began construction of a new and larger aircraft carrier to a different design. As American satellites photographed the facility, the size and layout of this new carrier became apparent. Its difference and new capabilities were why Morrison took note of it when he saw the KENNEN reconnaissance photos. Eventually that ship would enter service in the 1990s and be known as Kuznetsov. It would become notorious for breakdowns and fires and accidents. Kuznetsov is currently in the Russian Navy and undergoing overhaul, and recently Russia accused Ukraine of trying to sabotage the ship—a bizarre accusation considering that the carrier has been out of service so long that it will probably never sail again. Until it is scrapped or sinks from neglect, it will still show up in satellite photos. Next: Part 2, aircraft carriers and today’s use of commercial satellite imagery for open source intelligence. Note: Special thanks to Harry Stranger for acquiring the satellite images. His website is https://spacefromspace.com/. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.