344 posts
Is there actually something promising happening in this whole Iran nuclear drama? A number of recent indications suggest that Iranian President Ahmadinejad is in trouble, and his uncompromising stance on the nuclear program is being questioned within Iran. If Ahmadinejad…
A while ago I blogged about countries in the Middle East who have recently expressed interest in pursuing peaceful nuclear energy programs. That list now also includes Jordan. Why should they go for nuclear energy? As King Abudllah II recently…
I wanted to draw your attention to some of the discussion about the Chinese ASAT in the expert blogosphere. Pavel Podvig, Hans Kristensen, Noah Shachtman, the anonymous China Hand, and Cheryl Rofer all have great submissions. I’ve linked to most…
I’ve seen reports that China had three unsuccessful or non-intercept tests before the January 11th shootdown of FY-1C: MCINTYRE: According to U.S. government officials, after three misses, China last Thursday succeed in shooting down one of its own aging weather…
…but that’s not, as the AP implied, a measure of the program’s current progress. Read here.
This diagram shows the debris from the Chinese ASAT test, as presented in a preliminary analysis by MIT’s Geoff Forden using his awesome new GUI Missile Flyout program (download). The debris, Geoff notes, … … split in orbits, with one…
Most Russian news repeated almost verbatim the US and British press reports on the Chinese ASAT test, but there is a little info this afternoon on the Russian reaction. (Only Russian language links are up for now, translations are mine.)…
Aviation Week now has the story—with pretty much the same details that I’ve been hearing. FY-1C was struck by a direct ascent ASAT launched from Xichang Space Center at 5:28 p.m. EST on January 11. The satellite was approximately 850…
I noticed this blurb on SEESAT today: I’ve been hearing murmurings around the community here in Washington that there may have been an extremely energetic event (satellite break-up?) in the last week or so in the LEO altitude range (700-1000…
Classified GAO reports. I knew they existed, but this is one is one that ought to be declassified, at least summary form: Nonproliferation: Better Controls Needed to Plan and Manage Proliferation Security Initiative Activities. GAO-06-937C. September 28, 2006. About the…
