Satellite Tending Robot

Dots Representing Objects Orbiting Earth

Robots that rescue failing satellites and push “dead” ones into outer space should be ready in four years, it has emerged. Experts described the development by German scientists as a crucial step in preventing a disaster in the Earth’s crowded orbit.

Last year it was reported that critical levels of debris circling the Earth were threatening astronauts’ lives and the future of the multibillion-pound satellite communications industry. But senior figures at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) told the Observer they have been given the go-ahead to tackle a crisis that will come to a head in the next five to 10 years as more orbiting objects run out of fuel.

Their robots will dock with failing satellites to carry out repairs or push them into “graveyard orbits”, freeing vital space in geostationary orbit. This is the narrow band 22,000 miles above the Earth in which orbiting objects appear fixed at the same point. More than 200 dead satellites litter this orbit. Within 10 years that number could increase fivefold, the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety has warned.

Klaus Landzettel, head of space robotics at DLR, said engineering advances, including the development of machines that can withstand temperatures ranging from -170C (-274F) to 200C (392F), meant that the German robots will be “ready to be used on any satellite, whether it’s designed to be docked or not”.

In 2007, the US Orbital Express project succeeded in refuelling an orbiting satellite. However, that satellite had been specifically designed to dock with the device.

New Costly Method to Track Space Junk

Space is full of stuff, especially the space close to Earth. And the U.S. military would like to know more about what it is and where it is.

There are thousands of pieces of space junk – bolts, broken chunks of satellites, fuel tanks, rocket motors and other odds and ends from five decades of space flight.

Plus, there’s the debris from the Feb. 11 collision of an Iridium communications satellite with a Russian military satellite.

And there are about 900 other operational satellites.

Increasingly, though, the U.S. Air Force worries that today’s orbiting objects may be soon be joined by stealthy, mobile and deadly satellites that threaten U.S. assets in space.

The U.S. Air Force already keeps track of more than 18,000 objects in orbit, mainly using ground-based telescopes and radars. But the service wants to keep a sharper eye on the proliferating space clutter.

A Boeing-built satellite scheduled to be launched in April after years of delays is intended to do that.

The Space Based Space Surveillance system (SBSS) is a $425 million satellite equipped with a sophisticated 500-pound digital camera mounted on a high-speed gimbal, so it can be quickly swiveled to point and shoot pictures of space objects of interest.

Boeing promises that SBSS “will revolutionize space situational awareness.”

It’s a multimission satellite, said Marco Caceres, director of space studies at the Teal Group, a Fairfax, Va., consulting firm. SBSS is designed to “spy on spy satellites, monitor things that are launched, observe phenomena – natural or manmade – that might damage U.S. satellites and keep track of space junk,” he said.

The satellite’s launch has been delayed at least three times. At its most optimistic, the Air Force had hoped to have it up and operating in 2006.

Air Force officials say they hope eventually to be able to monitor satellites and space debris more or less in real time, much as the Federal Aviation Administration tracks commercial and military aircraft.

To do that is likely to take a constellation of four or more SBSS satellites. The tentative schedule for a constellation to be in place is about 2014.

The SBSS being launched this spring replaces an orbiting telescope, the Space Based Visible Sensor, which ceased operating last June after 12 years of service. Since then, debris and satellites have been tracked by GEODSS, the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance network of sensors in New Mexico, Hawaii and the island of Diego Garcia.

An obvious benefit of a space-based camera is that it can operate without interference from weather, atmosphere or daylight.

The Air Force calls the SBSS “essential” to achieving “full space situational awareness” – that is, knowing what and where everything in space is.

“Our adversaries recognize our overwhelming dependence on space assets, and we must have the ability to detect and track space objects – especially those that might be considered a threat,” the Air Force says in a written description of the program.

Among the threats that worry the Air Force are kinetic kill vehicles that destroy satellites by crashing into them, and killer satellites designed to collide with, explode next to or otherwise destroy U.S. satellites.

“When we see that a satellite has moved or is no longer in its current element set, SBSS can help us find that satellite and track it,” according to the Air Force Space Command.

Enemy stealth satellites are another concern.

The United States has had stealth satellites for about 15 years, said space and national security expert John Pike. Built to be invisible to radar, stealthy U.S. satellites pass over countries like China and Russia, collecting intelligence undetected. “And we want to make sure they don’t do that to us,” Pike said.

The idea is that the SBSS camera will be able to spot stealthy satellites even if radar can’t.

SBSS satellites also would provide a much wider view of space than do ground-based telescopes and radars. From the ground, sensors get a glimpse of objects in space only as they pass overhead. If they change orbits while out of range of the sensors, it is discovered only after the fact, when the satellites don’t show up where they’re expected to be on the next pass.

But a camera based in space can keep track of objects over a much wider portion of a hemisphere.

Boeing, which is reluctant to discuss SBSS in much detail, declined requests for an interview and failed to respond to written questions. The company announced in early February that its satellite had completed “end-to-end mission functionality” tests on the ground and was finally being readied for launch.

SBSS has had a troubled history.

If it gets off the ground this spring, the satellite will be three years late for the Air Force’s hoped-for launch in 2006.

By 2005, after about 18 months of SBSS development, an independent review team declared the program “not executable” as it was organized by Boeing and the Air Force. The team also determined that the program’s assembly, integration and test plan was risky and that its requirements were overstated, the Government Accountability Office reported.

As a result, the program was restructured in 2006. By then, the cost of the satellite portion of the program alone had ballooned from $189 million to $425 million. With other costs, such as the cost of the launch, the entire program grew to about $825 million. A four-satellite constellation could cost $3 billion or more, Caceres said.

Launch dates in 2007 and 2008 were also missed amid the turmoil.

Boeing is teamed with Ball Aerospace & Technologies on the SBSS program.

Spy Satellites Spying on Each Other

In a top secret operation, the U.S. Defense Dept. is conducting the first deep space inspection of a crippled U.S. military spacecraft. To do this, it is using sensors on two covert inspection satellites that have been prowling geosynchronous orbit for nearly three years.

An artist’s concept shows a DSP satellite deployed in space. Credit: Northrop Grumman

The failed satellite being examined is the $400 million U.S. Air Force/Northrop Grumman Defense Support Program DSP 23 missile warning satellite. It died in 2008 after being launched successfully from Cape Canaveral in November 2007 on the first operational Delta 4-Heavy booster.

Since the U.S. is now demonstrating the ability to do such up close rendezvous and inspection of American spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, it means USAF now has at least a “call up capability” to do the same to non-U.S. spacecraft like those from Russia and China.

The operation, at nearly 25,000 miles altitude, reveals a major new U.S. military space capability, says John Pike who heads GlobalSecurity.Org, a military think tank.

“There is not much we do in space any more that is really new, but this is really new,” Pike tells Spaceflightnow.com.

Although being used in this operation to obtain data on a failed U.S. spacecraft, such inspections of especially potential enemy spacecraft, is something the Pentagon has wanted to do since the start of the space age, Pike says.

The Orbital Sciences and Lockheed Martin “Mitex” inspection spacecraft involved are part of a classified Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) technology development program. When initially launched on a Delta 2 from Cape Canaveral in 2006, the project involved maneuvering around and inspecting each other at geosynchronous altitude.

But there is no unclassified data to indicate whether the two spacecraft may have secretly paid visits to one or more non-U.S. spacecraft in the geosynchronous arc that circles the Earth at about 22,300 miles altitude, much like the Capital Beltway circles Washington, D.C.

A U.S. Defense Dept. analyst speaking on deep background says although a visit to a non-U.S. satellite is doubtful, the demonstration will cause concern, especially among Chinese government military analysts in Beijing. He said they will see the capability as a new U.S. intelligence tool that could theoretically also enable a sneak anti-satellite attack in geosynchronous orbit.

A DSP satellite is pictured here during pre-flight testing. Credit: Northrop Grumman

One key feature aiding the Mitex spacecraft to fly undetected is they are unusually small — only about 500 pounds each. Virtually all modern geosynchronous orbit spacecraft are far larger.

“The Chinese will complain to the international community in Geneva, Switzerland” says Greg Kulacki, Chinese program manager for the Union of Concerned Scientist’s Global Security Program.

They will be concerned about whether a covert U.S. ASAT development could stem from the Mitex system, but also “about how the U.S. is always complaining about the need for transparency in Chinese space operations, but then is itself conducting secret operations like this,” Kulacki says.

At the same time, Chinese engineers will be glad to see the U.S. doing it. This is because it will also “give Chinese space planners an opening to develop their own similar system” to achieve parity with the U.S., Kulacki says.

At nearly 25,000 miles high, objects in geosynchronous orbit are too small to be easily seen optically or by radar. This gives the Defense Dept. concern that China could someday conduct ASAT tests there to follow up on its low altitude ASAT capability demonstrated earlier.

In fact, DSP 23 itself carried a White House-mandated sensor package designed to detect whether rogue nuclear powers like Iran or North Korea were conducting secret nuclear tests in deep space. That capability, however, has now been lost with the loss of DSP 23.

But when DSP 23 malfunctioned, it gave the two Mitex satellites a U.S. target to examine that could provide information on why the 2.5-ton satellite failed. Imaging of the satellite could possibly show damage from a micrometeorite hit or perhaps a bent antenna.

Radio data obtained up close could also perhaps detect a malfunctioning circuit or computer. And the exercise of coordinating the Mitex visits to the DSP in itself is valuable to DARPA.

In addition the Delta 2 that launched the Mitex spacecraft from the Cape here was a unique four-stage version that used a new, solar array-equipped upper stage developed at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) near Washington, D.C. This new NRL upper stage is itself an important new military space element, that in the future could allow the delivery of small covert spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit.

DSP 23, the last of a highly successful series flown since 1970, is only the second one to fail in orbit. But the DSP is now a ghost ship moving 69 miles per week east along the geosynchronous arc where many other spacecraft are parked.

The USAF is contacting operators who may need to move their spacecraft out of the way of the 5,000-pound hulk. If it were to collide with a Russian, Chinese or even European satellite, the crash would cause an international incident in space. It can not be shot down as was the failed USA 193 reconnaissance satellite, because the debris would stay in the geosynchronous arc.

Details emerging on how the inspection exercise is playing out indicate that the DSP most likely failed around Oct. 8, when it was supposed to maneuver to tweak its orbital position but did not complete that command.

The spacecraft was, at the time, parked at 8.5 deg. East longitude over the equator south of Nigeria, where its infrared telescope could scan Russia and China for missile tests and threats.

But when the satellite became uncontrollable from its ground control center, orbital mechanics started moving it east at about 69 miles, or 1 degree, per week.

The two Mitex satellites then became possibly the first “first responders” in space when they were dispatched on emergency runs toward the DSP from their own parking spots on opposite sides of the planet.

These artist’s concepts depict the Orbital- and Lockheed-built Mitex satellites and the Navy upper stage. Credit: DARPA

The initial Mitex was parked west of DSP 23 over the mid-Atlantic when, during the second week of December, it was commanded to begin to move east around the planet toward the 33-foot DSP, which by this time was crossing south of Eurasia.

It is not known how close this initial Mitex got to DSP 23, but their signatures essentially merged starting about Dec. 23. This could possibly mean the initial Mitex moved in close to DSP 23 to image it or perform other diagnostic work and could still be keeping watch there.

The second Mitex started its trip from a position much further east of DSP 23. It maneuvered west along the geosynchronous arc and flew past the DSP on New Years Day. It is possible this spacecraft was being prepared to then move back east toward the failed satellite.

Failed or depleted spacecraft like DSP 23 are normally maneuvered higher into a graveyard orbit so they will not be a hazard to other spacecraft holding their positions in the geosynchronous belt.

In a few years, DSP 23 will reach a position on the equator north of Australia where orbital mechanics will start to maneuver the spacecraft back west, where it will travel until reversing the process south of Europe years from now. It could continue this motion back and forth for thousands of years.

DSP 23 was supposed to bridge the space based U.S. missile warning capability to the lagging Space Based Infrared SBIRS program. But the USAF is now beginning an emergency procurement for a gap filler spacecraft.

The two Mitex spacecraft have relatively little maneuvering propellant remaining and will likely fly themselves into graveyard orbits in the next few years.

But the inspection of geosynchronous spacecraft remains a high military space priority. The USAF could theoretically go for an operational direct inspection system like the Mitex satellites for extremely high priority targets.

But it is also procuring the Space Based Surveillance Satellite System now in development by Boeing and Ball Aerospace and set for first launch in April from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The SBSS satellites are to be a low altitude system to optically characterize spacecraft maneuvers from a great distance away. It will have nowhere near the imaging capability of Mitex type spacecraft operating near the target satellite, however.

Planet Earth’s Orbital Junkyard

The first ever collision between two giant satellites in orbit has created vast clouds of debris, adding to the deadly perils facing future space explorers.

Yes I know how vast it is in space, how much room is up there in low earth orbit, but the more this kind of incident occurs the more likely it is that someone is going to get killed, in fact it will happen, it is simply a matter of time!

A defunct Russian satellite weighing nearly a ton crashed into a half-ton communications satellite around 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday.

NASA stressed that there was no immediate danger to astronauts on board the International Space Station because it is flying in a much lower orbit. But the debris could threaten the Hubble space telescope and other satellites in higher paths.

And the fragments, speeding faster than a bullet, will spread out to threaten the lives of astronauts in the decades to come.

It will take experts weeks to discover the extent of the wreckage. But it adds to the millions of fragments already circling the earth that have turned our patch of space into a cosmic junkyard.

The drama happened when an out-of-control Russian satellite, Cosmos 2251, launched back in 1993, ran straight into a working communications satellite that is part of a constellation of dozens of spacecraft called Iridium.

Travelling at many thousands of miles an hour, it smashed the comms satellite to smithereens as it broke up itself into thousands of pieces. Space scientists believe there will be dozens of large chunks, hundreds of smaller fragments and many thousands the size of grains of sand.

Fragments travelling in lower orbits will eventually burn up as they descend then burn up in the earth’s atmosphere. But in high orbits they can remain a real danger for hundreds of years.

NASA is already monitoring 13,000 man-made objects more than four inches wide that are circling the earth. There are more than 110,000 bigger than a centimeter. And the millions of smaller pieces can be just as deadly.

A tiny metal chip is like a rifle bullet which can rip a hole in a spaceship. A chunk the size of a tennis ball, speeding at 20,000 mph, packs the lethal power of 25 sticks of dynamite.

In September 2006, the shuttle Atlantis landed with a hole in its cargo doors blasted by a meteor or fragment of space junk. Other shuttles have had to have their windows replaced after they were damaged by speeding flakes of paint.

A TV and comms satellite, Express-AM11, was sent spinning out of control by a chunk of cosmic crud in March 2006 in a special orbit that is becoming the Piccadilly Circus of the space lanes.

That is because its height of 22,240 miles means satellites will remain above a fixed point on the ground, allowing our TV dishes to stay pointed at them. The satellites that bring us satellite TV all orbit at the same altitude making it a relatively crowded patch of space.

In January 2007, China used a ballistic missile to destroy one of its own satellites in an orbit about 550 miles high. That “Star Wars” test, condemned by the West, created a cloud of countless pieces of debris.

A Russian booster rocket exploded over Australia in March 2007 adding around 1,100 chunks of rubbish. And around 300,000 fragments were left when the upper stage of a US Pegasus rocket blew up in 1996.

Other odd bits of space jetsam include nuts, bolts, an astronaut’s glove and a £70,000 toolbag lost by NASA’s Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper as she was working outside the shuttle Endeavour in November last year.

In August last year, Europe’s Jules Verne craft, while attached to the International Space Station, fired its rockets to steer the orbiting outpost clear of the path of some Russian space junk.

Americas Earliest Spy Satellite Images

Below are declassified spy satellite images from Americas earliest attempts at looking in on its international neighbors, mainly the Chinese and the Russians during the cold war, although these images look grainy and crude they were considered the best in their class at the time.

Click on each image to read the description and then click again to see the largest sample.