Not a good year to be boeing hardware
We have outer space pretty well mapped, tens of thousands of pieces of space junk are tracked daily, I have a hard time believing you could take out a satellite and have nobody know.
Nah, just Boeing being Boeing.
We have outer space pretty well mapped
An estimate from before this satellite broke up was that 97% of space debris is not tracked and that there are 131 million pieces of untracked debris in space.
Now that said, I think your point is valid because most of this untracked debris is much smaller than a satellite
Does debris in the geostationary orbit move relatively to each other and the satellites?
If it’s still in geostationary orbit, no. Generally debris aren’t in a perfectly defined orbit like that, though.
If it’s debris that used to be in geostationary orbit, they’re going to be in an array of slightly different orbits, and so will have an epicycle of some kind as seen from the earth.
Also, note that intelligence satellites tend not to be geostationary, because that would limit their collection area. I don’t know about this specific one.
I was talking about Intelsat 33e which
iswas a communication satellite, not for espionage, on a geostationary orbit. The russian espionage satellites Olymp-K and Kosmos 1408 mentioned in the other replies, however are/were on a geosynchronous orbit and on low earth orbit, respectively, as you suggested.Oh, okay. It’s a funny name then.
Its named after the * International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium*
Oh yeah, I think I have heard that name before. (It’s organization, though)
communication satellite, not for espionage
Considering it’s Boeing and the same thing happened to the last one a few years ago… I mean, it’s not rocket science.
I mean…
Wouldn’t we know if anyone was launching a rocket into space.
They have one sigint satellite Olymp-K creeping around up there, why not a second that doesn’t have a Wikipedia article
Ah, ok. You mean another satellite on suicide mission. The russkis probably have some available. I was thinking of some anti-satellite
rocketmissile like it has been used for destruction of the satellite Kosmos 1408. However, as it is launched from an airplane, I doubt it produces a splash, like heavy rockets do, that would be visible from space by espionage satellites.No ASAT is going out to geosynchronus orbit.
ASAT missiles are only suitable for low earth orbit, you’d need a rocket about the size of a falcon 9 to reach GEO where Intelsat was sitting. Think people might notice that. Wouldn’t need the satellite to be on a suicide mission, could just slap a gun on it like the good old days.
Thanks. I didn’t notice the satellites were on different orbits.
