Messy battlefields: Space war would cause massive space junk problem

Given the amount of debris a single ASAT weapon can create,
as this illustration of last year’s Chinese ASAT test shows,
imagine the debris created by the deliberate use of ASATs. (credit: CelesTrak)

As space technology spreads, the incentives for small and medium-sized states to seek space warfare capability increases. A dictator who does not want to end the way Saddam Hussein did may seek way to hurt US warfighting capability in such a way as to impose major costs and casualties on the US early on. The destruction of a major US satellite would be both a substantive and a symbolic victory over the US. Hitting a number of satellites would increase the effect.

Such an attack would result in a major increase in the amount of debris orbiting the Earth. This would be the equivalent of a “scorched earth” policy if enough deadly debris were created. One possibility that has not been publicly examined might be to build highly- or ultra-destructive ASAT weapons that would literally pulverize the target and leave nothing behind but bits of dust. Even small particles can do some damage, but paint flakes like those that sometimes hit space shuttles have not managed to destroy an orbiter.

Source: Space Review.

Mankind’s secrets kept in lunar ark

IF civilisation is wiped out on Earth, salvation may come from space. Plans are being drawn up for a “Doomsday ark” on the moon containing the essentials of life and civilisation, to be activated in the event of earth being devastated by a giant asteroid or nuclear war.

Construction of a lunar information bank, discussed at a conference in Strasbourg last month, would provide survivors on Earth with a remote-access toolkit to rebuild the human race.

A basic version of the ark would contain hard discs holding information such as DNA sequences and instructions for metal smelting or planting crops. It would be buried in a vault just under the lunar surface and transmitters would send the data to heavily protected receivers on earth. If no receivers survived, the ark would continue transmitting the information until new ones could be built.

The vault could later be extended to include natural material including microbes, animal embryos and plant seeds and even cultural relics such as surplus items from museum stores.

As a first step to discovering whether living organisms could survive, European Space Agency scientists are hoping to experiment with growing tulips on the moon within the next decade.

According to Bernard Foing, chief scientist at the agency’s research department, the first flowers - tulips or arabidopsis, a plant widely used in research - could be grown in 2012 or 2015.

“Eventually, it will be necessary to have a kind of Noah’s ark there, a diversity of species from the biosphere,” said Foing.

Tulips are ideal because they can be frozen, transported long distances and grown with little nourishment. Combined with algae, an enclosed artificial atmosphere and chemically enhanced lunar soil, they could form the basis of an ecosystem.

Read the entire article at Times Online. See also “‘Lunar Ark’ Proposed in Case of Deadly Impact on Earth” on National Geographic.

Missile-ready China warns U.S. against plan to destroy spy satellite

In response to a U.S. plan to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite, China has warned against threats to security in outer space, without mentioning its own successful anti-satellite missile test last year. The Chinese government also stopped short of linking the planned U.S. strike with Beijing’s repeated calls for a complete ban on space weapons.Security analysts have suggested that Beijing could use the planned U.S. interception to justify the Chinese military’s unannounced destruction of a defunct weather satellite in January 2007. That interception drew criticism from senior U.S. military officials, who complained that it had left a cloud of debris that was dangerous to other space traffic. Chinese experts in turn have questioned the Pentagon’s explanation that it wanted to down the spy satellite to avoid contamination from hazardous fuel on board.

Source: International Herald Tribune.

SpaceShip Two unveiled

This week, Richard Branson unveiled his vision for the future of commercial spaceflight (see also our blog post in the Great Beyond). Based on a design by Ansari X-Prize winner Burt Rutan, his new SpaceShip Two will carry six paying passengers and two crew on a suborbital flight.

Source: Nature.

How China Loses the Coming Space War

A year ago to the day, China knocked a weather satellite out of orbit, and threw the international community into panic.  Some figured the satellite-killer test was the harbinger of a future war in space — the kind of conflict that could cripple a tech-dependent United States military.   Geoffrey Forden, PhD — an MIT research associate and a former UN weapons inspector and strategic weapons analyst at the Congressional Budget Office — examines the possibilities of an all-out Chinese assault on American satellites.  This is part one.  Click for parts two and three.

Source: Wired Danger Room. See also “Chinese cyberwarfare” fra ISN Security Watch.

Secrets and signs

Military patches and logos—simply the latest examples of heraldry dating back thousands of years—are by definition symbolic, so it is no surprise that they contain symbols. What is surprising is that these symbols often reveal information about the satellites’ identities and missions that are otherwise classified.

Source: The Space Review.