Japanese astronomers spot 'us or chinese' spy satellite
james oberg
Japanese astronomers spot 'us or chinese' spy satellite
Tokyo mainichi daily news (internet version-www) in english 04 apr 02
Okayama -- a group of japanese astronomers watching the heavens around the
clock to spot any sign of huge asteroids and comets apparently found an
undisclosed spy satellite, they announced thursday.
The unidentified object was spotted at the japan spaceguard association's
observation center in bisei, okayama prefecture, in december last year.
Officials of the association said they have since studied a list of over
8,000 man-made objects in space compiled by the north american aerospace
defense command (norad), but it was not registered despite its massive
size -- the satellite has a diameter of 50 meters.
Aerospace engineering specialist nobuo nakatomi said the object was likely
to be a spy satellite.
"it is a common practice around the world to secretly launch satellites for
technical or military reasons, and they won't make entry on the norad list,"
nakatomi said. "judging from the information available, it looks like the
object is a u.s. Or chinese spy satellite."
Shuzo isobe, director of the spaceguard association, was delighted with the
ability of its 1-meter-diameter optical telescope at the bisei spaceguard
center.
"we will keep watching space to spot asteroids or man-made objects that can
be a threat to earth," said isobe, who is also an assistant professor at the
national astronomical observatory of japan.
Spaceguard association officials said the unidentified satellite could be
observed with binoculars in the southeastern sky.
james oberg
Copyright 2002 Kyodo News Service
April 4, 2002 Thursday
Japanese group detected possible U.S. spy...
TOKYO, April 4
The Japan Spaceguard Association said Thursday it detected what may have
been a U.S. spy satellite in a stationary orbit above the equator near
Indonesia in December.
On Dec. 22, the astronomical observation group observed and photographed
the satellite with a diameter of 50 meters from a telescope at the Bisei
Spaceguard Center in the town of Bisei in Okayama Prefecture. The
satellite was located at 120 degrees east longitude and 36,000
kilometers above the equator near Indonesia.
Group members said they believe the satellite was operational since it
controlled its orbit on a regular basis.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the United States
has secretly deployed huge satellites -- some up to a 100 meters in
diameter -- to monitor communications and radar waves since the 1970s.
The association said its suspects the satellite was one of these models.
It was also not contained on a list that the U.S. Air Force publicizes
on space debris and satellites.
The association, a nonprofit organization, was established in 1996 with
the aim of discovering and monitoring asteroids, comets and other space
objects that may impact Earth and cause disaster.
Shardrukar
<job...@houston.rr.com> writes:
>Officials of the association said they have since studied a list of over
>8,000 man-made objects in space compiled by the north american aerospace
>defense command (norad), but it was not registered despite its massive
>size -- the satellite has a diameter of 50 meters.
>
That is rather larger than any satellite, that I'm aware of, that has been put
up in orbit by anyone.
thats over 150', big bugger even for solar panel max length. Could it be an old
Apollo upper stage?
james oberg
Think deployable/inflatable thin structure.....
"Shardrukar" <shard...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020404211940...@mb-mu.aol.com...
Allen Thomson
> Okayama -- a group of japanese astronomers watching the heavens around the
> clock to spot any sign of huge asteroids and comets apparently found an
> undisclosed spy satellite, they announced thursday.
"it would still be at risk of detection by... people doing radar and
optical orbital debris surveys, asteroid inventory projects.."
Gunter Krebs
MAGNUM/ORION 2nd generation ELINT satellite. The earlier CANYON and
RHYOLITE/AQUACADE ELINTS are reportedly smaller, and the newer MERCURY(adv.
VORTEX) and MENTOR(adv. ORION) may be much larger. To get an Impression,
what these birds may look like, there are some illustrations on
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/sigint/index.html (These are at best
intelligent speculations, but the antenna sizes may be near the reality)
Funny, that no one has detected these ELINTS earlier, as many observers look
at the GEO best for Comsats.
Gunter Krebs
www.skyrocket.de/space
"Markus Mehring" <m...@gmx.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:96bd35320bdd3bc8...@mm.invalid.de...
> On 05 Apr 2002 02:19:40 GMT, shard...@aol.com (Shardrukar) wrote:
>
> >That is rather larger than any satellite, that I'm aware of, that has
been put
> >up in orbit by anyone.
> >thats over 150', big bugger even for solar panel max length. Could it be
an old
> >Apollo upper stage?
>
> No, those buggers _are_ that large, mostly due to antenna structures. And
> among these large ones, this would probably be a rather small one...
>
>
> CU! Markus
> --
> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/8611/
Jari S
heavy piece of machinery. Does the 50 meters include any extended booms and
antennas ? Only other satellite or orbital platform that is close in size I
can remember is the Polyus, Soviet Union launched in 80's. They used an
Energia booster to launch that one. It's hard to believe that the Americans
could have launched anything of same size unnoticed.
Gunter Krebs
"Jari S" <jari.s...@welho.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:a8kdqg$m1d$1...@nyytiset.pp.htv.fi...
This is not a 50 m solid body, it is most probably a lightwight
umbrella-type antenna dish, which is unfolded in orbit. This kind needs not
to be a heavy structure, as it has not to stand the gravity. Even a inflated
structure might be thinkable (e.g. the IAE tested in low earth orbit was 14
m in diameter and had a weight of only 60 kg
http://www.lgarde.com/gsfc/spdeploy.htm ;
http://www.lgarde.com/gsfc/images/77d02c04.mpg). And the US did not launch
it unnoticed, we know pretty well, when the ELINT satellites (CANYON,
RHYOLITE/AQUACADE, CHALET/VORTEX, JUMPSEAT, MAGNUM, TRUMPET etc.)were
launched. We have just not seen any in real life.
Gunter Krebs
www.skyrocket.de/zoo
Steven James Forsberg
: This sounds like an odd one. Diameter of 50 meters would be a very large and
I think it is more likely that the report should have said something
like "the object has a dimension of 50 meters" rather than "diameter", which
implies that there is one big 'ole structure.
More likely is that the satellite has two (maybe more?) large
antennas connected to a central body, which would mean the satellite might be
50 meters "across" but is not one huge antenna. A 50 meter diameter circle
has roughly twice as much surface area as two 25 meter antennas, which
corresponds to much heavier. There are commercial satellites that use the
two-reflector structure, for example the new "Garuda" series. I can't
find the specs offhand, but IIRC it has two 13 meter diameter reflectors,
so with 10 meters of connection/mainbody it would be approx 36 meters
across in total.
regards,
---------------------------------------------------
sjfo...@bayou.uh.edu
Rupert Goodwins
Has anyone made a reasonable stab at what the capabilities of these
satellites might be in terms of sensitivity, frequency range,
beamwidth and so on? I know it's unlikely to be common knowledge, but
reverse-engineering what may be possible would be an interesting
exercise.
Be intriguing to thin how they untangle the mess they'd get if they
pointed it at a high density of GSM cellphones, and whether there's a
snowball's chance in hell of sniffing wireless LAN signals from out
there. I'd doubt it...
>regards,
>---------------------------------------------------
>sjfo...@bayou.uh.edu
>
Rupert Goodwins, technology editor, ZDNet UK
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
to obscurity, and beyond...
Allen Thomson
> Has anyone made a reasonable stab at what the capabilities of these
> satellites might be in terms of sensitivity, frequency range,
> beamwidth and so on? I know it's unlikely to be common knowledge, but
> reverse-engineering what may be possible would be an interesting
> exercise.
Well, I'm not a radio engineer, but it would seem to be fairly
straightforward to come up with estimates. Frequencies are, well,
frequencies of interest -- telemetry, military VHF/UHF communications,
maybe terrestrial microwave, etc. -- say 100 MHz up to 10 GHz as an
initial guess, maybe 30 MHz to 35 GHz as an excursion. Beamwidth
is constrained by good old lambda/D. Receiver sensitivity and noise
level are unlikely to be much better than is commercially available.
I agree, it would be an interesting exercise to map out what seems
feasible. Intuition suggests that a 50-meter dish with SOTA electronics
could do quite startling things from GEO, but intuition isn't the same
as analysis.