US plans for persistent satellite views

[LoBlo]

http://defensetech.org/2014/11/21/penta ... more-24140

Looks the U.S. deems certain areas worthy of 24 hour permanent satellite viewing (not transient). Obvious question is which areas and what are the estimated viewing area. Interesting.

LB

[BradOrbital]

The UAV capabilities are amazing with their persistent monitoring.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1469 ... 20000-feet

With lighter than air tech, viewing from 30km up should be possible.

[LoBlo]

Question is, should CMANO model this? It would mean being able to place an eye in the sky permanently during a scenario

[magi]

if thats the way it is.... it should be a model option..... but they can be destroyed....

[Dutchie999]

ORIGINAL: bradinggs

The UAV capabilities are amazing with their persistent monitoring.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1469 ... 20000-feet

With lighter than air tech, viewing from 30km up should be possible.

Thanks for posting that. Really interesting. Its amazing how simple sometimes things are. Any of us could have come up with this idea. By the way I hope that they carry a lot of hard drives in that pod. I am betting 1 gb per frame [:D]

[LoBlo]

ORIGINAL: magi

if thats the way it is.... it should be a model option..... but they can be destroyed....

Geosynchronous orbit is so much higher than standard satelite orbits. Is there any indication that the capability to reach that far out exist? From what I understand the recent Sat kills that China and the U.S. demonstrated were near Earth orbits rather than the extended burns for higher orbiits. For example, the international space station orbits at 425km, but a geostationary Satellite orbits at 42,000kms.

LB

[Dimitris]

IIRC China recently conducted at least one direct-ascend ASAT test aimed at GEO orbits.

[mikeCK]

While we are on the topic...what is the viability of using lasers to simply blind the optics? Not temporarily...I mean fry it. If we can burn a drone up thousands of feet away, seems like you should be able to do some damage to satellites?

[SpacePope]

ORIGINAL: mikeCK

While we are on the topic...what is the viability of using lasers to simply blind the optics? Not temporarily...I mean fry it. If we can burn a drone up thousands of feet away, seems like you should be able to do some damage to satellites?

From what I recall from my physics classes, the main issue would be range. So we can burn a drone's optics from thousands of feet, but a satellite in low earth orbit is anywhere between 160km/99mi to 2000km/1200mi (with most satellites being around 320km/200mi). As the laser's beam travels from the ground to the satellite, it would diffuse and spread out.

[BradOrbital]

"Degrading" of optical satellites is already being done (temporarily) but yes, that would be a nice addition if the equipment is on one of the ships or its a landbased facility. Sunburn is right, GEO orbit is not out of reach.

EDIT: Found the article on the incident. It degraded but not blinded however the followup results were never detailed on so... possibly.

http://www.aaas.org/news/experts-warn-g ... guidelines

While they might just degrade the imaging satellites from land/sea. What would be more effective is in orbit. Imagine the X-37B firing a laser to a nearby satellite a few hundred meters away...

[mikeCK]

Seems like a good job for the airborne laser system that they had mounted in 747s for a while. I realize those were initially intended for ballistic missile interception at the launch point, but if you could fly at 45,000 feet your atmosphere is a lot thinner and I think you get a lot less diffusion and lose a lot less power from hitting thick atmosphere

Edit:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

They mention an anti-satellite capability but only low Earth orbit. Now that is in reference to the ability to burn through but I'm wondering about simply damaging optics. I don't know ....I suppose if they could've done it, they would have

[LoBlo]

ORIGINAL: bradinggs
"Degrading" of optical satellites is already being done (temporarily) but yes, that would be a nice addition if the equipment is on one of the ships or its a landbased facility. Sunburn is right, GEO orbit is not out of reach.

Not saying that they are out of reach. If a sat can be lifted into Geo orbit it can be taken down from Geo orbit. Just wondering if there any open source reports that state someone is fielding a surface launch missile for the task to reach the geo ranges yet? I thought the Chinese launch was a near orbit strike, not a geo one...

lb

[BradOrbital]

Hi lb,
Looking at China's suspected ASAT tests, there was a possible DN-2 missile (Dong Neng 2) which kills by kinetic impact (and I see is not in Command's database yet) it launched to a near-GEO orbit in May last year. The US tracked it to 10,000km and suspect it could go to 30,000km - so GPS would be at risk.

It would be interesting to have this in the database to play with but then we'd also need some targets up there.

[LoBlo]

Got a link?

[BradOrbital]

Sure, sorry, was early this side.
http://swfound.org/media/115643/china_a ... g_2013.pdf