Tag: space

America’s Cold War Doomsday Satellite

When most people think about drama surrounding the launch of a nuclear weapon, they usually think about some sort of tense face-off between two officers who don’t agree on whether or not to launch, often spurred by some sort of garbled message or unforeseen circumstance that leaves those orders in doubt. But in reality, this is actually the least dramatic portion of the entire exercise. American nuclear missile crews, regardless of which leg of the nuclear triad they fall under, train ceaselessly to execute the orders to launch under any circumstances. If the codes match…missiles fly. What *does* keep nuclear planners up at night is how to make sure the shooters end up getting the orders to fire in the first place.  

Early in the Cold War, new and maturing technologies in warfare and communications led to some interesting ideas about how to get launch orders to alert crews no matter what. Simply put, communications underpinned the entire credibility of the nuclear deterrent. The Pentagon needed a way to make absolutely sure that no matter what happened to its command and control infrastructure during the opening of a nuclear exchange, the president’s orders would be delivered. In the end, they decided that the best way to launch a bunch of missiles and set bombers flying was to launch a missile capable of delivering those commands. That missile was the AN/DRC 8 Emergency Rocket Communications System or ERCS.

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NASA warns China is conducting military programs in space under the guise of civilian exploration

NASA has warned that China could be preparing for a lunar takeover in the coming years, using its civilian space program as guise for military operations.

Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, fears the Asian nation’s ‘extraordinary strides’ in the last decade are more than just for science, but to exert dominance over the moon.

China has launched a craft to the moon and brought samples back to Earth, has its own space station circling the planet and is eyeing 2030 for when it will send humans to the natural satellite.

While NASA is set to land humans on the lunar South Pole in 2026, Nelson has raised concerns that China has the capabilities to beat them there.  

‘China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive,’ Nelson told members of the House Appropriations Committee at a 2024 budget hearing. 

‘We believe that a lot of their, so-called civilian space programs is a military program,’ Nelson continued. ‘And I think, in effect, we are in a race.’

Nelson made the statements to a committee this week as support for why NASA needs a $25.4 billion budget for 2025.

The country plans to establish a landing base on the moon’s surface within the next five years, making it all the more necessary for the US to ramp up its efforts and investments to send astronauts to space. 

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How the ‘NASA Nazis’ helped transform sleepy Alabama farming town into America’s ‘Rocket City’ and win the Space Race – but dark legacy of ‘our Germans’ led by former SS officer remains divisive

Huntsville, Alabama, is fiercely proud of its Rocket City nickname – earned for its crucial role in America’s space race success.

The city, which transformed in the 1950s from a cotton market town to the world’s foremost hub for space travel research, is home to NASA‘s Marshall Space Flight Center, which led development of the Saturn rockets that put the first man on the moon.

But there is a dark side to the story of these epic achievements: many of the men who led the groundbreaking work were Nazis – recruited through a top secret operation after the Second World War.

The fascinating, and troubling, reality is often omitted from lessons about America’s victory in the space race against the Soviet Union. It is also something Huntsville continues to grapple with today.

There are those who say the ‘greater good’ outweighed the moral cost of recruiting members of an evil regime, allowing them to avoid justice in the process.

But others say bringing these men to the US was an inexcusable decision – compounded by the fact their Nazi backgrounds go largely unmentioned in lessons about America’s space history.

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Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say

SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.

The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.

The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.

If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.

The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.

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FOR HALF A CENTURY, OUR CALCULATIONS ON NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS IN SPACE HAVE BEEN WRONG, LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIST REVEALS

On July 9, 1962, the largest in a series of tests involving nuclear explosions in space was conducted by the United States. Dubbed Starfish Prime, the test involved the launch of a W49 thermonuclear warhead developed at Los Alamos from Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

The warhead detonated approximately 250 miles above the Earth, producing belts of radiation as high-energy electrons became trapped, amplifying the magnitude of the natural Van Allen radiation belt and increasing the potential adverse effects of the trapped radiation.

Now, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory has found a novel means of offering better protection for space technologies: by fixing mistakes in mathematical calculations related to the effects of nuclear explosions in space that have gone undetected for close to half a century.

The errors relate to our understanding of the influence electromagnetic waves exert on the dispersal of electrons that become trapped in the planet’s magnetic fields when nuclear explosions in space occur.

According to Greg Cunningham, a space scientist with Los Alamos National Laboratory, the discovery and resolution of these longstanding errors in past mathematical calculations will offer scientists an opportunity to improve protections for space technologies, particularly involving models governing the effects of radiation resulting from the detonation of nuclear devices at high altitudes.

“This allows us to make better predictions of what that threat could be and the efficacy of radiation belt remediation strategies,” Cunningham said in a recent statement.

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600-MILLION-CAMERA ‘SKYNET’ BASIS FOR NEW LUNAR SPY SYSTEM AS CHINA PURSUES SURVEILLANCE STATE BEYOND EARTH

With the world’s largest mass surveillance network already under its belt, China is now looking to establish its omnipresence off-world, with plans to extend its sophisticated “Skynet” spy network to the Moon.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA), China’s equivalent to America’s NASA, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, recently disclosed their intentions to build a massive lunar surveillance network in the Chinese journal Acta Optica Sinica. 

According to Chinese media, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) aims to secure its planned lunar base with an omnipresent optical surveillance system, drawing directly from the extensive experience and technical prowess honed through Skynet, also known as Tianwang.

“The construction and operation of the optical surveillance system for the (International) Lunar Research Station can draw on the successful experience … of China’s Skynet project,” CNSA said in its report. 

Paradoxically named for the highly advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system that becomes self-aware and tries to exterminate humanity through an army of robots and machines in the Terminator movie franchise, “Skynet” refers to an interconnected facial recognition system operated by the Chinese government. 

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) flagship newspaper, the Global Times, reports Skynet’s facial recognition software has a 99.8% accuracy rate and can scan the entire population of China, 1.4 billion people, in under a second. However, these claims cannot be independently verified. 

According to the PRC, the name “Skynet” originates from an ancient Chinese proverb describing the omnipresence of justice and not from the fictional AI killing machine. “There is forever a net in the sky, with [a] large mesh but letting nothing through,” the proverb reads. 

And in fairness, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) also has its own “SKYNET,” a classified program that uses machine learning to extract information on possible terror suspects using GSM cellular data. 

However, the term “Skynet” is often colloquially used to describe the smothering system of mass surveillance used by the Chinese government to monitor its citizens. 

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JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE HAS DISCOVERED AN ENORMOUS REMNANT OF THE EARLY UNIVERSE THAT ASTRONOMERS SAY SHOULDN’T EXIST

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has helped reveal an 11-billion-year-old discovery more massive than the Milky Way, which astronomers say should not exist.

The unprecedented discovery, which could upend our current understanding about the formation of galaxies, and also require scientists to rethink the mysterious nature of dark matter, involves an extremely old—and massive—galaxy that existed in the early universe which was home to an ancient population of stars.

What makes the discovery unique and perplexing to astronomers is that the stars observed in this primordial galaxy should not have been able to form according to current models, because there would not have been enough dark matter accumulated to enable their genesis.

The discovery is the latest in a series of findings by the James Webb Space Telescope since its launch that are challenging our existing theories about the universe, and broadening our understanding of cosmic phenomena.

According to Karl Glazebrook, a Distinguished Professor at Swinburne University of Technology and leader of an international team behind the discovery, the new findings were several years in the making and required separate observations from two of the world’s most massive telescopes to tease out enough data to determine its age through spectroscopic observations.

“We’ve been chasing this particular galaxy for seven years,” Glazebrook said in a statement, “and spent hours observing it with the two largest telescopes on earth to figure out how old it was.

However, according to Glazebrook the dormant galactic monster “was too red and too faint, and we couldn’t measure it.”

“In the end, we had to go off Earth and use the JWST to confirm its nature,” Glazebrook said.

Present models about galactic formation are in conflict, since ongoing observations that include discoveries that the James Webb Space Telescope have helped enable continue to challenge existing theoretical ideas. These include longstanding tenets of modern astrophysics like the prediction that massive galaxies were unlikely to be as prevalent in the early universe.

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“Lunar Lander Deployed”: SpaceX Rocket Launches US Spacecraft Towards Moon

At 0105 ET, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, propelling an American spacecraft successfully into space and, in one week, could be the first US lander to touch down on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972.

Called Nova-C, the spacecraft is built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines. It will attempt to land on the lunar surface next Thursday (Feb 22). This will be the fourth attempt to reach the moon after three other failed attempts, including one by a US firm, another by a Japanese company, and a third by an Israeli nonprofit. 

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SPACE FORCE WILL TAKE COMMAND OF FUTURE LIVE TARGET-TRACKING SATELLITES

The U.S. Space Force is set to take command of a new fleet of satellites that will provide real-time monitoring of ground targets around the globe, offering unprecedented surveillance capabilities. 

Known as the Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI), and in development by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the Space Force will be the lead operator of this new and advanced satellite system, reports Space News. This initiative represents a significant modernization effort, as it will replace aging aircraft systems like the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS).

Last year, the US government allocated $5 billion to develop the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) system. The eventual launch of this system will test how well satellites can track missiles in flight. The Space Force and its component Space Development Agency (SDA) have aimed to deploy over 135 satellites to track advanced missiles, with a focus on enhancing missile defense capabilities, especially as Russia and China have both been rapidly developing these technologies. The architecture’s configuration and its relation to missile defense are still under consideration, and there are ongoing discussions about the deployment of sensor constellations for global coverage and specific regional needs.

Now, the NRO is partnering with the Space Force and will have access to the data from GMTI, but the military chain of command will drive the program based on priorities approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. The Space Force is working on the requirements for the new sensors and will oversee the acquisition program’s progress, while the NRO is responsible for the actual acquisition of the classified sensor payloads based on its own design.

Space Force guardians will be responsible for tasking and controlling where the satellites direct their sight, based upon requests from commanders in the field. U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, while speaking at a panel discussion at the Air & Space Force Association’s Warfare Conference in Aurora, Colorado, called the new technology an “operational imperative.”

According to Burt, the plan is that the GMTI system will replace what current spy aircraft are doing, and essentially move that aspect of intelligence gathering into the space domain. While nearly all of this is classified, the system will be able to monitor and track targets in real time, operating on land, sea, and in the sky. Moreover, all that intelligence can then be put into the hands of operators in the field. 

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‘Russian Nuke in Space’ the October Surprise Come Early?

The big ‘national security threat’ announced today is supposedly about Russia wanting to put a nuclear weapon in space, prompting some to question whether it’s all an election year ploy.

The controversy began when House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) asked President Biden to declassify information about a “serious national security threat”.

According to ABC News, “Two sources familiar with deliberations on Capitol Hill said the intelligence has to do with the Russians wanting to put a nuclear weapon into space.”

The weapon would reportedly be designed to be used to take out satellites.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) responded by telling reporters he wanted “to assure the American people, there is no need for public alarm.”

The big, scary threat is serious business and involves a space-based nuke controlled by evil dictator Putin, but it’s also “not an immediate crisis,” according to what three members of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee have told Politico.

Okay, then. Just for election season, is it?

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