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Obviously, I am interested in China’s hit-to-kill program, whether it is aimed at satellites or ballistic missiles.

Someone posted a very interesting analysis of the Chinese hit-to-kill program on a Chinese bulletin board (in Chinese of course). (I am not sure which is the original version, though I think it may be one of two.)

It is starting to make its way around — the post was extensively cited in a IISS Strategic Comment, and was reviewed by the blog TaiwanLink (which I have been meaning to recommend to readers.) Since Strategic Comments are unsigned and TaiwanLink is anonymous, two or even all three may have the same author. I honestly don’t know. But it seems that this little bbs posting is worthy of a closer look.

I don’t know yet how to evaluate the claims in the article — the author warns “草草而成，讹误难免，仅供参考.” I’ll let you decide what to make of that injunction. (My Chinese just isn’t good enough.) But (s)he offers names, dates and places that can be confirmed, which is always encouraging.

Also, the author is apparently a reader — (s)he reproduces an image from Geoff’s post, SBIRS—Two Heads are Better than One).

So.

I thought we might have a useful discussion of the post. And, since the author is at least familiar with the website, perhaps (s)he’d like to participate. I think it is a little early to annoint a random BBS post as the definitive account of the test, but on the other hand the author — in haste or not — seems to have put in a fair amount of research.

Jane’s Information Group, and a whole bunch of other sites, have “found” a new, large launch complex in Iran that is close to the rather spartan launch pad for the Safir. What is irksome (at least to me) is that the new launch complex is visible in Google Earth images dating back a year ago. This allows some interesting estimates for when the Simorgh project started, how much importance Iran assigns it, and when the new rocket might be launched (a lot sooner than some of us suspected). Here are two Google Earth images dating from 1 March 20010 2009 (typo!) and 9 October 2009. Nothing is visible at the site on 25 February 2005 so all this work is relatively recently. Iran is so active!

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The first three pieces of debris cataloged from the Yaogan 1 breakup are shown. The approximate time of the incident (2/4/10 at 6:49 UTC) was determined by “backtracking” the pieces. The fact that the debris and the remainder of the satellite do not exactly “match up” indicates errors associated with the orbital measurements.

Yaogan 1, a Chinese Earth Observation Satellite, erupted into multiple pieces last week. By back-tracking the pieces, I believe the date and time of the incident was February 4, 2010 at about 6:49 UTC. It is interesting to note that the maximum difference in orbital speeds is about 22 m/s. That can be compared with the hundreds of meters per second typical in a collision. Judging by past experience, a few more pieces of debris will be cataloged in the days to come. Yaogan 1 would have been four years old this April (launch date: 27 April 2006).

Just to be complete, there is no indication that this was anything other than an internal explosion. While the original satellite might appear in this particular view to be over China at the time of the incident, it is actually well over the Ocean.

As you undoubtedly noticed, Iran launched a rocket on February 2. And released pictures of a space launch vehicle. Which may not be the same thing.

As some of you may know, Geoff Forden is going through some personal stuff right now, which is why we are missing his usual detailed commentary on Iran’s space launch. (He has something coming, but I am inclined to be patient.)

So, in honor of Geoff, I am just going to create an open thread for the Iranian space launch. Here are images from IRNA, ISNA and Mehr to get you started.

Have at it.

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The most recent satellite reported to be joining China’s constellation of Beidou navigation satellites is shown in yellow. An example of a geostationary Beidou satellite is shown in white and China’s one and only navigation satellite in a medium Earth orbit (MEO) is shown in green.

The launch of what is reported to be a seventh Chinese navigation satellite (on 16 January 2010) provides an opportunity to review what we know about this system of satellites. First, it is clear that the satellite, which has yet not been officially designated a Beidou satellite on the NASA space-track website (at least as of 12 noon, 18 January 2010), is intended to be a geostationary satellite. It, and the third stage of the CZ-3 launch vehicle, are in a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), as the image above shows. Within a few days of launch, the satellite’s apogee motor will fire, positioning the satellite in to its final orbital.

If the case of Beidou 1D is any indication, we will not know which satellite it is replacing until China moves it into position. China, as a responsible spacefaring nation, moved Beidou 1D into a supersync orbit just days after the launch of its replacement satellite, Beidou G-2. Beidou 1D as only about two years old when China replaced it with what is reported to be a second generation Beidou satellite. That is somewhat surprising since Beidou 1 was over six years old at the time and one might have expected it to be replaced before the much younger 1D. If China decided to replace 1D because it was failing, they must have had plenty of warning since they were still in control of that satellite.

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Current Beidou Constellation is shown (at the top) with the ground tracks for three orbits for each satellite projected onto the Earth’s surface; (lower left) an equatorial view of the satellites; (lower right) a polar view of the constellation. Note the Beidou 1D’s ground track shows both a large longitudinal displacement over three days and a large inclination—the up and down motion of the ground track. Dates indicated are the launch date of each satellite.

China’s first generation of navigational satellites did not have an onboard atomic clock. That, of course, complicated their operation and limited the number of users. Instead of broadcasting their own timing, as GPS satellites do, the satellite operated as a “bend in a pipe” with the time standard generated on Earth and, in fact, the “user” position determined by a central location after a round trip of radio signals from the center to the satellite to the user and back. It would be very interesting to know if the second generation satellites had their own space qualified atomic clocks.

With this latest satellite, we are also starting to see a pattern in Beidou launches. About every three years (2000, 2003, 2007, 2009*, 2010) a new wave of satellites is plugged into the constellation. (The asterisk for 2009 indicates that this launch might well have been accelerated to replace a dying satellite.) That might indicate the length of time it takes to design and/or build a new satellite. If it includes design time, I would expect evolutionary changes; something we might expect from China in any case given their known history of systematic development.

Iran is justifiably proud of its satellite launch last February. After all, both North and South Korea failed in their satellite attempts in that same year. It appears from images that are starting to show up on the web—pointed out to me by the ever observant Wonk-Reader Tal Inbar—that they have taken the show given to President Ahmadinejad at the Iranian Space Center on the road. These images show new and revealing details of both the Safir/Omid system and some indication of the quality of workmanship that goes into it. The image above is another image of the back of the Safir’s second stage engine platform showing more about how the turbopump is enclosed. Compare it to the image shown here, which shows more of the turbopump. The very frail looking “flaps” are light-weight baffles to prevent the fuel from sloshing about particularly during staging. Other images show what appear to be drain holes to the fuel tanks, a new telemetry dish antenna, and several nice views of the first stage engine (and are those indigenously produced components laid out on little pedestals?) Any help translating the Farsi on any and all these images would be gratefully appreciated!

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This is the second in a series of preparatory posts leading up to a discussion on the Safir’s guidance system. The first discussed the orientation of the Safir at launch and showed, as closely as the errors associated with photo-interpretation would allow, that it’s first stage guidance and control system was a standard SCUD-type system: Fin I is oriented along the direction of flight of the missile and its pitch program operates in that plane.

This short blog post discusses the ground terminal trucks Iran used to communicate with the satellite. Iran, in accordance with the “rules of the road” organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), had an uplink (401 MHz) and a downlink (465 MHz) frequency for the Omid satellite recorded in the ITU-R’s Master Registry. Various computer animations of the launch show mobile ground stations positioned around Iran for communicating with the satellite and it would be nice to confirm that images taken of ground station trucks are used for that purpose. It also turns out to be a very satisfying exercise in photo-interpretation. A future post will discuss communications for guidance purposes, as was implied in the secret missile memos.

As the image above—taken during a visit to the Iranian Space Center by President Ahmadinejad—shows, there are trucks with potentially suitable antennas. The dual antennas are of a Yagi-Uda design (often simply called a Yagi antenna) with 12 passive “directors,” a looped Balun-type element for radiating the signal and, at the very rear of the array, a somewhat larger “reflector.” The reflector is to ensure that there is a preferred direction to the antenna as opposed to being sensitive to signals from both directions along the boom. The Balun radiator matches the impedance from the simple coaxial cable to the array and the directors increase the “gain” or directionality of the antenna. Interestingly, there are both vertical and horizontal arrays on each boom with the horizontal array set back a quarter wavelength (see below), perfectly suited for detecting or radiating circularly polarized radio waves. That is needed because the Omid satellite tumbles as it orbits and its polarization—while not circular—is directed in an arbitrary, time varying manner. The bulky cable run up to the antenna hub is for controlling the direction of the antenna arrays and could, though there is no way to know from the photo, be capable of autonomous direction if it is set to maximize the strength of the signal.

Yagi antennas are nice from a photo-interpretation point of view because their dimensions are so easily related to their wavelength. For instance, an optimal 13 element (counting the radiator but not the reflector) Yagi for 401 MHz has a boom length of 2.7 meters. That’s from reflector to last director. It also has a reasonable antenna gain, which means that half the uplink beam is radiated into a cone with a half angle of about 16 degrees. The question then becomes: is the observed array consistent with these expectations?

The image to the left is taken from a more suitable perspective for photo-interpretation. The antenna arrays are nearly horizontal and close to being aligned with the rear of the truck. I have drawn two vertical lines continuing up the truck’s rear edges and a third, horizontal, line paralleling the antenna booms. Of course, there are a great number of approximations taken in this drawing. But then again, there are some approximations still to come. The most important of those is to assume that the truck’s rear cabin is approximately two meters in width. With that assumption, we can estimate the boom length to be approximately 2.9 meters long (from radiator to last director). This is consistent with the Omid satellite’s uplink frequency given all the approximations we have made. Either the far antenna in the image is shorter than this (if it is used for the downlink) or they are running the antennas nonoptimally for reception or there is a different receiver somewhere not on the truck.

What I find most interesting is the conclusion that if there are antennas on the Safir that have significantly different lengths than the Omid’s, then these trucks are not being used to communicate with them.

Update | 12:42 November 3, 2009 As if on cue, Michael Wines in the New York Times ledes Qian’s obituary with the grossly inaccurate statement that Qian “single-handedly led China’s space and military rocketry efforts.” No, he didn’t. Not single-handedly, at least.

Qian Xuesen — often called the “father of China’s space and missile programs” — has died. He was 98.

The late Iris Chang wrote a wonderful biography of Qian, Thread of the Silkworm, which I heartily recommend.

Qian was a more complicated figure in the development of China’s space program than mere partrimony suggests. Gregory Kulacki and I, in our monograph A Place for One’s Mat, argued that Qian’s legacy is profound, if mixed:

The historical accounts also shed light on the role of certain personalities. Qian Xuesen is rightly lauded as the “father” of China’s space program. But from the historical accounts, he emerges as a more complex, human figure than in English-language accounts. Qian is, first and foremost, a cheerleader, pressing China’s leaders to consider the possibilities of interplanetary spaceflight even as China endured one of the worst famines in human history. In some cases, Qian’s enthusiasm may have undermined China’s space development. In other cases, he was essential to move the bureaucracy. In the United States, a certain mythology has grown up around Qian, suggesting that, were it not for his deportation from the United States, China might not have developed missiles and satellites. Qian was undoubtedly a major figure linking the scientists and engineers to the political leadership. But Qian, for all his technical skill, was not the principal designer of any of China’s rockets or satellites. Dozens of other Chinese scientists, many of them trained in the United States, made invaluable contributions. American myths about Qian reflect views about “great men” in history, as well as the debates about McCarthyism, not Qian’s role in China’s space program.

This is a carefully worded paragraph. I recommend the entire monograph to get a sense of the role that Qian played. (Peter Brown observes our portrayal put Qian in a somewhat different light than Chang. I am happy to let readers judge for the themselves.)

Our conclusions are based, in part, on a two volume set of Qian’s correspondence that Gregory hauled back from China:

钱学森. 钱学森书信选 1956.2 -1991.12. 国防工业出版社, 2008.
钱学森. 钱学森书信选 1992.1 -2000.7. 国防工业出版社, 2008.

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Cataloged debris associated with the 10 February 2009 collision of Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 as of 23 October 2009. The orbits associated with the major pieces of each satellite are indicated.

As we wait for the next shoe to fall in the Iranian nuclear crisis, I feel a real need for a short break to consider something completely different at least for a little while. The evolution of the debris from last February’s collision between a dead Cosmos satellite (Cosmos 2251) and Iridium 33 always represents an interesting and important digression. First off, here is the score card as of 23 October 2009:

Debris Associated with Iridium 33’s Orbit:
Cataloged: 484
Decayed: 17 (3.5% of those cataloged)

Debris Associated with Cosmos 2251’s Orbit:
Cataloged: 1102
Decayed: 35 (3.2% of those cataloged)

Qualitatively, the plot of the debris positions shown in the image above shows that the debris associated with the cosmos satellite’s orbit has precessed to a greater extent around the globe than that associated with the Iridium’s. This does not represent a wider angular distribution to the pieces following the cosmos’ orbit but rather a significantly greater change in the ensemble’s average speed than that associated with the Iridium. (It appears that observational biases eliminated those pieces with large angular differences from the catalog, at least it keeps them from being associated with either of these two satellites.) This difference in orbital speed distributions is shown below, which I made several months ago when there were far fewer pieces cataloged:

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The orbital speeds of the collision debris. The arrows indicate the original satellites’ orbital velocities.

Why did the pieces associated with the Cosmos’s orbit end up with such a significantly greater shift in orbital speed than for the Iridium’s? It would be tempting to say that this asymmetry is somehow related to the geometry of the collision but it is hard to imagine how that asymmetry could arise. Perhaps the Cosmos passed through a portion of the Iridium that had relatively light components and that “all” those were bounced into the Cosmos’s orbit or at least into trajectories that made large angles with both orbits and were not associated with the collision. Those pieces that ended up in the Iridium orbit might have been broken apart by the shockwaves that traveled through the satellite after the collision. That might explain the factor of roughly twice as many pieces in the Cosmos orbit as in the Iridium orbit. Such “delayed” breakup is probably not properly modeled in NASA’s computer programs that predict the numbers of debris created (at least not in my limited understanding of those programs, though I could be wrong about this). In any case, this collision should reveal interesting phenomena is hypervelocity collisions of extended objects. Phenomena that will be important for, among other things, missile defense where the increasing emphasis is the destruction of specific components of incoming warheads. (Richard Lloyd has an updated version of this book but for some reason I cannot find a link for it.)

Update (one minute later): It looks as if the other shoe has indeed fallen with NPR reporting that Iran has reneged on the TRR refueling deal.

Up-update: First media reports are always so problematic. Other reports now say that Iran will respond to the deal next week. Thanks for pointing this out Josh! ( Here is a more “official” statement.

The last serious debate over ASAT testing occurred in the 1980s. In addition to advocating the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan administration officials pushed for the testing of a kinetic energy ASAT system employing the Air Force’s F-15 as a launch vehicle (above). The Soviet Union had previously tested, with decidedly mixed results, a co-orbital interceptor designed to kill satellites in low earth orbit with buckshot-like effects.

The Pentagon carried out a KE-ASAT test against an aging U.S. meteorological satellite on October 13, 1985. Members of Congress disinclined to fund further ASAT tests employed a variety of blocking methods, including legislative provisions calling for the consideration of diplomatic initiatives, which the Reagan administration parried in the following way:

In general terms, the United States remains willing to consider limitations on specific weapon systems, including ASATs, which meet the requirements accepted by the Congress in 1984: that they be equitable, verifiable, and compatible with US national security. In the case of ASATs, however, we have yet to identify a specific proposal which would meet these criteria.

Alternative views on the value of ASAT testing constraints filled one of my shoe boxes in the 1980s. Paul Stares, then at Brookings, wrote a fine book, Space and National Security (1987) in which he argued that,

The principal benefit of an arms control agreement would be to prevent transforming what is still a relatively immature threat to one that is altogether more formidable and more difficult to counter unilaterally. Given the problem of monitoring the dismantlement of existing systems, test restrictions provide the most useful approach to constraining the evolution of more sophisticated ASAT weapons.

Daedalus published two volumes on space weapons in 1985, including an essay by Kurt Gottfried and Richard Ned Lebow, warning that, “ASATs could both increase the likelihood of war and complicate its termination.” Their prescription, like that of Stares, was the prevention of the development of new, highly capable ASAT systems through a test ban. Former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, writing in Arms Control Today, also supported a ban on further ASAT testing “so far as verification can support such a ban.”

More creative thinking came from a high-powered commission co-chaired by Fred Ikle and Albert Wohlstetter. Their 1988 report, Discriminate Deterrence, included the following recommendation:

Exploration of a possible tacit understanding or even explicit agreement with the Soviets on self-defense zones around many of the satellites… Such an arrangement might permit some entries into the self-defense zones and would not affect normal, non-threatening satellite operations, including perhaps some inspections.

A verifiable KE-ASAT test ban in the 1980s would have met US national security requirements, but few could foresee back then how much of a threat debris would pose to satellites essential for personal, national, economic, and international security. A clear glimpse of this unwelcome future was provided fourteen years after the Reagan administration’s F-15 ASAT test, when one piece of debris from the shattered target satellite came within one mile of crashing into the newly launched international space station.

If there were any lingering doubts about the sheer irresponsibility of causing massive debris fields by means of KE-ASAT tests, the PLA dispelled them in January 2007.