WASHINGTON (CNN) -- China last week successfully used a missile to destroy an orbiting satellite, U.S. government officials told CNN on Thursday, in a test that could undermine relations with the West and pose a threat to satellites important to the U.S. military.
>Chinese use a missile to ram and destroy an old, orbiting satellite
>Experts: China now may have ability to knock out U.S. GPS and spy satellites
> Washington issues formal diplomatic protest
Imagine making the taiknauts wear the yellow CWO vests...Originally posted by Ito_^:wah lau. litter the space. must fine em!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials are unable to communicate with an expensive experimental U.S. spy satellite launched last year by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a defense official and another source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
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Efforts are continuing to reestablish communication with the classified satellite, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but "the prognosis is not great at this point," said the defense official, who asked not to be identified.
"They have not yet declared it a total loss. There are still some additional steps that can be taken to restore communication," the official added, noting some satellites had been recovered in similar situations in the past.
The official said the problems were substantial and involved multiple systems, adding that U.S. officials were working to reestablish contact with the satellite because of the importance of the new technology it was meant to test and demonstrate.
The other source said the satellite had been described to him as "a comprehensive failure."
There was no suggestion by either of the sources that the satellite had been purposely damaged as part of a terrorist attack. Another government official said he had no information about any attacks on U.S. satellites.
The National Reconnaissance Office, which designs, builds and operates reconnaissance satellites for the U.S. military and intelligence communities, had no comment.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard- Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics, said the satellite in question could be a classified NRO satellite launched into space on December 14 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which did not appear to be part of any "existing pattern."
The NRO satellite identified only as L-21 was the first ever launched by the newly merged rocket launch units of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp..
The new joint venture announced the successful launch of the satellite, but neither the company nor the NRO gave any details about the satellite's mission.
McDowell said the satellite was mysterious to satellite watchers because it was in a low orbit of about 220 miles, or 350 kilometers, above the Earth and had not made any move to change its orbital position.
"This is definitely a setback for the NRO, which has had an aggressive technology development program over the past few years," McDowell said. "It adds to the problems that the NRO is having transitioning to its next generation of satellites."
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Pentagon has revamped nearly all its space programs in recent years due to cost overruns, technical issues and schedule delays, but space officials say they have made "significant progress" to get those programs back on track.
Several classified NRO programs, including the Future Imagery Architecture program run by Boeing, have required infusions of several billions of dollars.
Mishaps and satellite failures happen occasionally. In August 1998, an NRO satellite estimated to cost over $1 billion was destroyed when the Lockheed Titan 4A rocket launching it into space exploded some 20,000 feet above the Atlantic.
One industry official said temporary communications lapses occurred occasionally, but a lasting loss of communication with a satellite, as suggested in this case, was rare.
Officials at Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop Grumman Corp., which all produce national security satellites for the U.S. government, declined comment given the classified nature of the NRO satellite.
Orbital Sciences Corp., another smaller satellite manufacturer, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Under a space policy authorized by President Bush in August, the United States asserts a right to "freedom of action in space" and says it will "deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so."That's the problem you see, they don't seriously expect other nations to take this lying down. Such a policy is in a sense, a lazy's man way of trying to stave off a space race when it has already started. It is quite obvious that this is exactly the kind of thing that China will plan to do if it intends to be a military force to be reckoned with, and I doubt passing policies that say "this is my playground and you are not allowed in it" will really pay off, if anything it encourages the Yanks to be lazy about it.
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/space_junk.htmlOriginally posted by SingaporeMacross:Imagine making the taiknauts wear the yellow CWO vests...
Lieutenant General Michael Maples told a congressional hearing in his annual threat address that China and Russia were the "primary states of concern" regarding military space programs.
"Several countries continue to develop capabilities that have the potential to threaten US space assets, and some have already deployed systems with inherent anti-satellite capabilities, such as satellite-tracking laser range-finding devices and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles," the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency said in his written testimony.
That was on January 11, the same day it appears China's satellite missile test was conducted.
Despite Maples's warning, the Chinese explosion caught officials by surprise, rocking the intelligence community after months of smoothrelations between Beijing and Washington.
It is reckoned that the test of anti-satellite technology is the first of its kind in two decades by any nation and raises the spectre of an arms race in space.
The US and the Soviet Union tested anti-satellite technology in the 1980s, and Washington shot down one of its orbiting satellites in 1985. Thanks in large part to the debris that results from the tests, both sides stopped the programs.
The first countries to express disquiet over the tests were involved in the Pacific's trilateral security dialogue: the US, Australia and Japan.
Chinese officials said yesterday that Washington was overreacting, but these things are not without calculation. It is another expression from Beijing of its emerging international standing.
China is big on so-called soft power but this satellite missile test raises the stakes. And it came just as there appeared to be a breakthrough between the US and North Korea on its nuclear weapons program.
According to reports out of Germany, discussions between US envoy Christopher Hill and representatives from Pyongyang had created some common ground.
Now the US finds itself at the threshold of another north Asian diplomatic maze.
"The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of co-operation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said yesterday.
"We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese."
China had already taken steps in the UN to set up an international conference to address talk that a space arms race was imminent.
Washington's national space policy, released last year, maintained the US's right to defend itself in space against any actions it considers hostile.