What Are the Russians Up To?

It is bad enough that Russian military is operating dangerously close to NATO airspace and neutral Scandinavian airports, and now operating erratically in Syria and crossing over into Turkish airspace, but this questionable behavior is happening in space as well.

Three Russian satellites appear to operate independently and outside routine orbits while one, called Luch, has been orbiting close to U.S. commercial Intelsat satellites and potential spying on their operations. 

Space News reported: 

Many in the space community believe the incident marks one of the first publicly documented times a commercial operator has been subject to this kind of approach by a foreign military satellite. The episode also raises questions about what kind of recourse commercial satellite companies have in these situations.

In addition to the Luch satellite, launched in September 2014, Russia launched Cosmos 2499 (pictured above) in May 2014 and Cosmos 2504 in March 2015. All three spacecraft have worried U.S. space and military officials who believe the Russians are testing anti-satellite technology. 

Of course, as I have noted before, the US Air Force is not helpless. The X37B unmanned space shuttle, which can stay in orbit for more than a year at a time, appears to be our not-so-secret weapon that can most likely capture and destroy worrisome satellites. Hence, we appear to be on the brink of a new war arena and, like Ukraine and Syria, Russia is spoiling for a fight.

Update: The Russians are now attempting to explain the mysterious Luch satellite, stating it is

...simply a relay satellite, sending signals from spacecraft to Earth, for example from the International Space Station — we have communications problems there — and from one satellite to another.

I am not convinced.

SpaceX Explosion: Maybe Low Earth Orbit is Not so Routine After All

It appears getting supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) is becoming quite the challenge.  For the third time in about nine months, a resupply mission has ended in failure (the first failure being in October with Orbital Sciences and the second taking in place in April with a Russian launch).  This time it was SpaceX that experienced the disaster about 2 and a half minutes into the launch earlier today. 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had this to say about the failure:

We are disappointed in the loss of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. However, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months. We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight. The commercial cargo program was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles. We will continue operation of the station in a safe and effective way as we continue to use it as our test bed for preparing for longer duration missions farther into the solar system. 

Administrator Bolden also noted that the Russians and Japanese have missions that will go up shortly to keep the ISS well-supplied.  This is encouraging, yet the decline is successful missions is very worrying, particularly since this same technology is (Russians) or will be (Space X) used for human transportation.  

So far, the SpaceX website has nothing on the incident.  The last piece for the press is from June 25.  I am sure quite a bit more information from NASA and SpaceX is to follow.   You can watch for more news at this link. 

Russian Rocket Problems

With all of the attention earlier this month directed at the North Korean rocket launch, most of the newspapers were ignoring a Russian rocket launch that went awry.  On December 8th, a Russian Proton rocket failed to place a satellite into correct orbit.  This was the third such failure in the last 16 months. 

The communications satellite, built by France's Thales Alenia Space, belonged to Russian oil giant Gazprom.  The Proton rocket's upper stage failed after launch, placing the satellite outside its intended orbit.  While the Russian government ordered an investigation of the mishap, Thales Alenia Space was working to get the satellite into its proper slot by firing on-board thrusters, though this is expected to reduce the life of the spacecraft. 

The satellite is expected to be in its proper orbit and functioning as intended by January 8, 2013.