Tag: space

Canada in talks with the US about joining its ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense system, Carney says

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday his government is talking to the U.S. about joining President Donald Trump’s future Golden Dome missile defense program.

The multilayered, $175 billion system would for the first time put U.S. weapons in space. Trump said the previous day he expected the system to be fully operational by the end of his term in 2029.

“Is it a good idea for Canada? Yes, it is a good to have protections in place for Canadians,” Carney said.

Carney confirmed he’s had talks with Trump about it and said there are discussions with senior officials. Trump said the Canadian government had contacted his administration indicating it wants to join the program and that he will work with Ottawa to ensure it contributes its “fair share.”

Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground- and space-based capabilities to detect and stop missiles at all four major stages of a potential attack: detecting and destroying them before a launch, intercepting them in their earliest stage of flight, stopping them midcourse in the air, or halting them in the final minutes as they descend toward a target.

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Five Eyes now getting sensitive space intel – The Times

The US has begun sharing its “most sensitive” military intelligence on China’s and Russia’s space operations with the UK and other members of The Five Eyes (FVEY) global intelligence group, The Times has reported, citing a senior commander within the US Space Force.

Until this month, the work of Space Delta 9, a unit focused on America’s orbital warfare, was largely meant only for US officials with top-secret security clearance.

However, in a move that a Space Delta 9 spokesman described to The Times as “momentous,” British military chiefs have been allowed to observe operations at the unit’s base in Colorado.

The other Five Eyes members, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, have also been allowed access to the highest levels of US space intelligence, the British daily reported on Wednesday.

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Catastrophe Looms Above: Space Junk Problem Grew ‘Significantly Worse’ In 2024

As if you didn’t have enough to worry about, the risk of space junk causing a catastrophic chain reaction that profoundly affects life on Earth rose significantly in 2024, according to the latest annual analysis from the European Space Energy (ESA).

The numbers are mind-boggling. ESA estimates there are now more than 1.2 million orbiting objects larger than 1cm and more than 50,000 larger than 10cm. Of the enormous number of orbiting missiles, only 40,000 are individually tracked by surveillance networks. The number in that category rose by 8% last year. Part of that increase is attributable to the August explosion of China’s Long March 6A rocket, one of the worst junk-generating incidents in decades. “If we extrapolate current trends into the future, as before, catastrophic collision numbers could rise significantly,” the ESA report said.

Don’t judge space junk’s potential for destruction using your Earthly instincts: Traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour in space, even a small object has the potential to inflict major damage. In one incident that demonstrates that fact of physics, a 2mm piece of space once junk put a 5cm-wide dent in a climate satellite. A modest move up the scale brings much more power: “A one-centimeter piece of debris has the energy of a hand grenade,” ESA’s Tiago Soares told DW.  

In an ominous 2009 incident, a Russian Cosmos satellite collided with an Iridium satellite, creating a cloud of about 2,000 pieces of junk measuring 10cm or more. That’s brings us to the nightmare scenario that should fill you with dread: The Kessler Effect. Imagine an initial major impact that creates hundreds of shards, which then start colliding with more orbiting objects, setting off a chain reaction. Actually, you don’t need your imagination.

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Secretive Russian military satellites release mystery object into orbit

A trio of secretive Russian satellites launched earlier this year has released a mysterious object into orbit, sparking interest among space trackers and analysts.

The three satellites, designated Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583, launched on a Soyuz-2.1V rocket from Plesetsk cosmodrome early on Feb. 2 (GMT). Since then, the satellites, whose purpose is unknown, have displayed interesting behavior, while in a near-polar orbit roughly 364 miles (585 kilometers) above Earth.

In March, the satellites appeared to be conducting potential proximity operations, or maneuvering close to other objects in space, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and spaceflight activity tracker.

Following this, the U.S. Space Force cataloged a new object in orbit, which was possibly released by Kosmos 2581 on March 18.

Russia has provided no details about the satellites and their mission. Many Kosmos missions are classified.

The released object could be used for a number of objectives, including military experiments, such as satellite inspection or target practice, testing technology for docking or formation flying. It may also be a scientific payload or even the result of an unintentional fragmentation, though this would usually result in numerous pieces of debris.

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China Is Taking War To Earth Orbits: A ‘Space Pearl Harbor’ Is On The Way

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” the U.S. Space Force’s Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein told the 16th annual McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia on March 18. 

“That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

Guetlein’s stark comment about China signals a break with the past. “This marks the end of the Western-American-liberal dream of nations leaving wars on Earth so they can cooperate in space to advance humanity,” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone after the general’s widely publicized remarks. “Communist China has now taken war to the heavens, to low earth orbit, and very likely, will take war to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The heavens are no longer safe for the democracies.”

Space is now a highly contested domain, but it wasn’t always this way. “We told ourselves we would be the dominant power forever,” Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, said to Gatestone. “We coasted on that notion for far too long. Rising powers, notably China and Russia, saw how reliant we were on space—and how poorly defended our systems were. Our access to the strategic high ground is now more threatened than ever before.”

As Weichert points out, “bureaucratic inertia and a lack of visionary leadership from both political parties” allowed China and Russia to develop the capabilities to threaten America in space.

There was another party at fault: The U.S. military failed to protest when it could see there was an obvious threat. “There was a gentlemen’s agreement until recent that we didn’t mess with each other’s space systems,” Guetlein said. “We didn’t jam them, we didn’t spoof them, we didn’t lase them, we just kept them safe.”

Why was the U.S. so gentlemanly? Presidents believed that because the U.S. had more space assets than others, it was not in America’s interest to trigger a race to build weapons to destroy those assets. Yet this view, appearing commonsense at first glance, was naïve: It was apparent even then that neither China nor Russia could be enticed into good behavior. Generals and admirals should have sounded the warning.

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NASA’s Stranded Astronauts Confirm Biden Abandoned Them in Space — He Declined Elon Musk’s Rescue Offer For ‘Political Reasons’

NASA’s stranded astronauts have acknowledged that Joe Biden deliberately abandoned them in space for political purposes.

Barry Wilmore and his crewmate Sunita Williams have been stuck on the International Space Station since July last year after their Boeing Starliner ran into technical issues.

At a virtual press conference on Tuesday, Wilmore was asked about Elon Musk’s claim that Joe Biden declined his offer to bring them back on a SpaceX flight several months ago for “political reasons.”

“I can only say that Mr Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual,” Wilmore said.

Wilmore went on to say he and his partner at the “utmost respect” for Musk and Trump.

I can tell you, at the outset, all of us have the utmost respect for Mr. Musk, and obviously respect and admiration for our President of the United States, Donald Trump.

We appreciate them, we appreciate all they do for us, for human spaceflight, for our nation. We’re thankful that they’re in the positions they’re in.

The words they’ve said — politics — I mean, that’s part of life. We understand that, and there’s an important reason why we have a political system, and the political system that we do have.

And we’re behind it 100 percent. We know what we’ve lived up here. We know the ins and outs and the specifics that they may not be privy to.

And I’m sure they have some issues that they’re dealing with, information that they have that we are not privy to.

So when I think about your question, that’s part of life. We are on board with it, we support our nation, we support our nation’s leaders and we’re thankful for them.

During an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience last week, Musk explained how Biden had declined his offer and intentionally “pushed the return date past the inauguration date.”

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Texas Company Lands On Moon In “First Successful Commercial Landing” 

Firefly Aerospace’s “Blue Ghost” lander became the first private spacecraft to successfully land on the Moon after descending from lunar orbit early Sunday morning.

Firefly confirmed on X around 0336 ET that the 6.6-foot-tall lander “stuck the landing” and “became the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing. This small step on the Moon represents a giant leap in commercial exploration,” adding this “paves the way for future missions to the Moon and Mars.” 

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China plans to build enormous solar array in space — and it could collect more energy in a year than ‘all the oil on Earth’

Chinese scientists have announced a plan to build an enormous, 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) wide solar power station in space that will beam continuous energy back to Earth via microwaves.

The project, which will see its components lofted to a geostationary orbit above Earth using super-heavy rockets, has been dubbed “another Three Gorges Dam project above the Earth.”

The Three Gorges Dam, located in the middle of the Yangtze river in central China, is the world’s largest hydropower project and generates 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. According to one NASA scientist, the dam is so large that, if completely filled, the mass of the water contained within would lengthen Earth’s days by 0.06 microseconds.

The new project, according to lead scientist Long Lehao, the chief designer of China’s Long March rockets, would be “as significant as moving the Three Gorges Dam to a geostationary orbit 36,000km (22,370 miles) above the Earth.”

“This is an incredible project to look forward to,” Long added during a lecture in October hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as reported by the South China Morning Post. “The energy collected in one year would be equivalent to the total amount of oil that can be extracted from the Earth.”

Despite recent advances in the cheapness and efficiency of solar power, the technology still faces some fundamental limitations — such as intermittent cloud cover and most of the atmosphere absorbing solar radiation before it hits the ground.

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Russia Warns of Response if Weapons Are Launched Into Space

Russia will react if some country launches weapons into space and it has such developments, Russian state space corporation Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov said on Friday.

“Russia has always been adamant and consistent in its position of not launching any weapons into space. Well, let’s say that the probability that they might appear there depends on the balance of power. And, in principle, if some country risks using outer space as an arena for military operations and launches some type of weapon into space, then Russia, of course, will have to respond to this in an adequate manner,” Borisov told Solovyov Live, adding that “Russia has such developments.”

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In a rare disclosure, the Pentagon provides an update on the X-37B spaceplane

After more than nine months in an unusual, highly elliptical orbit, the US military’s X-37B spaceplane will soon begin dipping its wings into Earth’s atmosphere to lower its altitude before eventually coming back to Earth for a runway landing, the Space Force said Thursday.

The aerobraking maneuvers will use a series of passes through the uppermost fringes of the atmosphere to gradually reduce its speed with aerodynamic drag while expending minimal fuel. In orbital mechanics, this reduction in velocity will bring the apogee, or high point, of the X-37B’s orbit closer to Earth.

Bleeding energy

The Space Force called the aerobraking a “novel space maneuver” and said its purpose was to allow the X-37B to “safely dispose of its service module components in accordance with recognized standards for space debris mitigation.”

While the reusable Boeing-built X-37B spaceplane is designed to land like an aircraft on a runway, the service module, mounted to the rear of the vehicle, carries additional payloads. At the end of the mission, the X-37B jettisons the disposable service module before reentry. The Space Force doesn’t want this section of the spacecraft to remain in its current high-altitude orbit and become a piece of space junk.

“Once the aerobrake maneuver is complete, the X-37B will resume its test and experimentation objectives until they are accomplished, at which time the vehicle will deorbit and execute a safe return as it has during its six previous missions,” the Space Force said.

The Space Force has identified mobility in orbit as a key focus for its next-generation space missions. This would allow satellites to more freely move between altitudes and orbital inclinations than they can today. Commanders don’t want a spacecraft’s movements to be constrained by the amount of fuel it carries, allowing satellites to “maneuver without regret.”

Space Force leaders have discussed in-orbit refueling, more efficient propulsion technologies, and other ways to achieve this end. Aerobraking is another way to lower a spacecraft’s orbit without using precious propellant.

“This first-of-a-kind maneuver from the X-37B is an incredibly important milestone for the United States Space Force as we seek to expand our aptitude and ability to perform in this challenging domain,” said Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s chief of space operations.

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