US spy satellite re-entry

phlogistician said:
....The newer Russian TOPOL missiles are very steerable throughout the flight though, rendering ABM pretty useless....
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Perhaps. I do not know, but the answer (truth or falseness of your statement) depends upon each of their acceleration abilities.

I also do not know how much the just shot down spy sattelite was being accelerated by atmospheric reentry forces (probably not much as it was dense and in very thin air) but what ever that "atmospheric acceleration" was the SM-3 had more capability - a lot more, I suspect, as many of the eariler developmental tests (which also were successes) took place in much denser air with less dense targets. (Mainly spent rocket shells)

I have had no direct contact with this APL program but note that the standard missle was designed to kill incoming cruise missles, even those that might be "bobbing and weaving" via the large aerodynamic forces even their small wings and fins could achive in sea-level dense air. Thus, I think it would not be easy for an ICBM to survive by "ducking" at the last second.

I also do not know the horizontal reach of an Aegis ship' with an SM-3. The ship defense standard missle can fly far beyond the contolling ship's radar horizon for low level targets - Perhaps killing a bomber 100 miles away horizontally. The new "coperative engagement" system allows one to fly from the far side of the carrier battle group entirely across it (50 miles or more wide) and kill a sea skimmer that the launching ship can not even see. I.e. as it flys, it will be handed off to other ships in the battle group. This allows the most exposed ship (the one on the side of the battle group from which the attack is coming) to conserve (instead of exhaust) it load out of standard missles.

My APL office mate wrote the program that the US Navy uses both to load out (usually in a port, but possible in a calm sea) the ship's limited number of missle boxes for the amazingly wide variety of missles that fit in them. That program also automatically determines which one is shot in battle when several could be. There is considerable errosion of the box liners by the hot exhaust - one would like to have all boxes in need of relining during next port call, so that the ships puts back to sea "brand new" rather than come back to port sooner for reload with half the boxes never used. It took him more than a year to get everything optimized and yet have the program be responsive to the dynamic needs and even the style of different captains.
 
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UPDATE:
NORAD released a few orbital elements of USA 193 satellite debris, resulting from the February 21st missile interception.
And judging from the orbital elements, the impact was a lot more violent than was predicted by the US military.
Most of the debris lost altitude fairly rapidly, and burned up within two or three orbits, but some debris was indeed blasted into higher and dangerous orbits, with over 85 large pieces that were tracked (numbered from 32502 to 32587).
Most will orbit for a over a month or longer.

Example

Debris number 32685.
Period 92.77
Incl. 57.63
Apogee 588
Perigee 232
 
It seems the U.S military has a slightly differing story.

“The shooting apart of a crippled U.S. spy satellite last month created no significant new space debris, with all but small bits burning on re-entry to the atmosphere, the mission commander said on Wednesday.”

Read more
 
draqon said:
isn't NORAD, the US military?

http://www.norad.mil/
oh it's Canada....
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Did you read the link you sited?
norad.mil said:
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a bi-national United States and Canadian organization charged with the missions of aerospace warning and aerospace control for North America. ... The commander is appointed by, and is responsible to, both the U.S. president and the Canadian prime minister. The commander maintains his headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.
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NORAD keeps track of things in orbit, all kinds of things. This includes satellites, pieces of space junk, and even Santa Claus.
 
D H said:
Did you read the link you sited?

NORAD keeps track of things in orbit, all kinds of things. This includes satellites, pieces of space junk, and even Santa Claus.
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well I write what I think. At first I though its called by US and than I found it is controlled by Canada too.
 
Yes, NORAD is essentially the `space troops` section of the military, (N America, NATO etc) that mostly deals with the tracking of space objects etc...
The DATA from NORAD clearly shows 85 large pieces that have orbits that reach(ed) higher than the ISS orbit.

The US military spokesperson makes no mention or dismisses those few pieces of debris.
 
draqon said:
... I found it is controlled by Canada too.
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I am not sure the DEW line radars still exists, but may and still may be feeding data into the NORAD net. The Distant Early Warning radars were in Canada. In another thread, I have suggested that something like that but much smaller, cheaper and more modern could be part of an Israeli defense system, instead of their current High Kill Ratio RETALITORY policy. I.e. even old WWII technology makes a ture defense of Israel possible. (and much better and cheaper now that transistor and fast computers exist.)

More details of a TRUE DEFENSIVE PLAN which I suggested long ago for Israel at:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1124159&postcount=115
Plan is not perfect, but does seem to have a chance to end ALL Israeli deaths and greatly reduce the number of Palestinians killed.
 
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