SBIRS GEO 5 Centaur fuel blowout imaged from Australia

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On 18 May 2021 at 17:37 UT, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched SBIRS GEO 5 for the US Space Force from Cape Canaveral, using an Atlas V rocket. SBIRS GEO 5 is an Early Warning satellite that detects missile launches (SBIRS = Space-Based Infra-Red System). It was placed in a geosynchronous orbit. Two other small rideshare payloads were also launched on this launch.

Looking at the mission profile, I realized that the fuel blowout of the Centaur upper stage from the launch would be visible from Australia and Indonesia. So I alerted the Seesat-list and also sent a private alert to Paul Camilleri, an observer in Australia who in the past has made spectacular imagery of such Centaur fuel blowout events.

Paul grabbed his camera and went out. And returned with spectacular imagery, which I show here with his kind permission. According to Paul, the blow-out cloud reached magnitude +3.

Paul made his imagery with a Nikon D3200 with an F2.0/85 mm lens. They are 5-second exposures (fixed tripod) at ISO 6400.

In the first image shown, taken 18:55 UT just before start of the blowout sequence, you can see both the Centaur upper stage and the SBIRS GEO 5 payload, which had separated from the Centaur some 40 minutes earlier. In the second image shown, taken 5 minutes later, you can see a V-shaped fuel cloud and a circular ring of blown-out fuel. In the other images, you see further venting, creating a bright V-shaped cloud that slowly dissipated over the next tens of minutes. Paul imaged it untill 19:40 UT.

 

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Paul was not the only one imaging the fuel blowout. Australian astronomer Robert McNaught also captured the event on his all sky camera (image used with permission):

 

 

The fuel blowout happened at about 12000 km altitude. The Centaur upper stage was over the eastern Indian Ocean, just northwest of the West Australian coast at that moment (see map below).

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Fuel blow-outs are done to get rid of left-over rocket fuels in the rocket stage. Venting them into space reduces the risk that vapours from the left-over fuel might ignite (e.g. because of static electricity buildup in the rocket stage) and cause a debris-generating explosion.

Updates:

Animated image sequence by Grahame Kelaher from Australia:

 

Animated image sequence by Tel Lekatsas, also from Australia:

A movie from the all-sky camera of the Edward Pigot Seismic Observatory, courtesy of Michael Andre Phillips in Australia is here (look at the right of the image in the gap in the trees)

[UPDATED] Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine? (but be quick)

(Updated 20 Dec 2017 23:25 UT with a new plot that includes DSP)

Say, you are the leader of a nefarious country that is in posession of submarines equiped with long range nuclear missiles. You want to launch a stealth missile attack codenamed "Operation Orange Squeeze" on a northern hemisphere Super Power.

Where would you direct your submarine, and where would you best fire you missiles, from the perspective of an as-late-as-possible space-based detection of your missile launches?

The answer came to me today when, after a question by someone (in the context of a war crime investigation), I looked into the current global coverage of the Space Based Infra Red System (SBIRS), the US system of Early Warning satellites that looks for missile launches:

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The red areas in the map above have an almost continuous coverage by SBIRS satellites (and often by multiple SBIRS satellites at the same time). The dark blue and black areas in the map by contrast have only a few minutes of SBIRS coverage each day, or even none at all.

As you can see, there is a clear gap in coverage in the southeastern Pacific, with lowest coverage in the area near the Galapagos islands. That is where I would park my nuclear missile submarine.

You might have to be quick to pull off your nefarious plan though. A new SBIRS satellite, the fourth satellite in the geostationary component, will launch in January. It wouldn't surprise me if it stops the gap, once operational.

Of course, this map is in fact somewhat deceptive anyway. It only shows the coverage by SBIRS. But there is also the legacy early warning satellite system called DSP (Defense Support System), which still has active satellites, and which is not taken into account here [UPDATE: but see the plot at the end of this post!]. It is less sensitive than SBIRS, but likely will detect your ICBM SLBM launch.

Back to SBIRS. SBIRS is made up of two components, each currently consisting of three satellites (so six in total): three geosynchronous SBIRS-GEO satellites at geostationary altitude, and three SBIRS-HEO satellites (TRUMPET-FO SIGINT satellites with a piggy-back SBIRS package) in 64-degree inclined Highly Elliptical Orbits with two revolutions a day.

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The map above shows the coverage of the three geosynchronous SBIRS satellites (a fourth will be launched in January). Eurasia, Africa and the western Pacific Ocean has a continuous coverage by these satellites, with central Asia, Pakistan and India (the latter two known nuclear powers) particularly well covered.

The SBIRS-HEO coverage is more variable and depends on the date and time of day, but the system is designed such that at least one of the HEO satellites will have much of the Northern hemisphere in view at any time. Here are a few examples, for various times of the day: note how coverage of the Northern hemisphere is near-continuous (the HEO component also particularly covers the Arctic region well, which is at the edge of the GEO component's coverage).

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A SBIRS satellite typically has two modes: there is the scanning mode, which scans the whole visible hemisphere of the earth (as seen from the satellite) for infra-red heat signatures in less than 10 seconds. And there is the staring mode, a more sensitive sensor which can be used to observe a specific region or just detected infra-red event.

In the case of a missile launch, the sensors pick up the heat signal of the missile engine. Because of the large degree of worldwide coverage which the system now provides, an undetected stealth launch of a nuclear missile has become almost impossible.

SBIRS is probably an important source of  Early Warning capacity and information on the recent North Korean missile tests.


UPDATE 20 Dec 2017  23:25 UT:

I now also included the four DSP satellites that are still operational according to the database of the Union of Concerned Scientists. That leads to the following map:

click map to enlarge

As you can see, the gap has become smaller, but a gap is still there. Red October might be lurking in front of the South American west coast.

SIGINT Galore!

USA 136 (Trumpet 3), a TRUMPET in HEO. 28 Nov 2016
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The evening of 28 November was very clear - no moon and an extremely transparent sky, with temperatures around zero.

I used it to target several objects in GEO and HEO. Due to the favourable sky I could use exposure times twice as long as usual.

All the classified objects imaged were Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, i.e. eavesdropping satellites. The image above shows you one of the TRUMPET satellites, USA 136 (1997-068A), crossing through Andromeda. This is an object in a 63 degree inclined HEO orbit. The satellite was coming down from apogee at that moment and at an altitude of ~31 500 km.

Below is another object in HEO, USA 184 (2006-027A). This too is a SIGINT satellite, part of the TRUMPET-Follow On program (aka Advanced TRUMPET. It also serves as a SBIRS platform.

USA 184, a TRUMPET-FO in HEO, 28 Nov 2016
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This object was near apogee at this moment, at an altitude of 39 000 km over the Faroër Islands, which is why it looks stellar in this 20-second exposure. The star field is in Cassiopeia.

Both these objects hadn't been observed by our network for a while, hence they were somewhat off their predictions (1.5 degrees in position in the case of USA 136; and 1 degree off position in the case of USA 184).

I also briefly imaged a part of the geosynchronous belt, much lower in the sky. The targetted GEO objects were SIGINT satellites too: both Mercury 1 and Mercury 2 (1994-054A and 1996-026A), The Advanced ORION satellites Mentor 4 and Mentor 6 (2009-001A and 2012-034A) and the NEMESIS satellite PAN (2009-047A).

PAN and Mentor 4 (both shown below) have a story attached to them and were the subject of my recent article in The Space Review, which you can read here.

PAN (USA 207), a NEMESIS in GEO, 28 Nov 2016
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Mentor 4 (USA 202), an Advanced ORION in GEO, 28 Nov 2016
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Back to basics: AEHF 2 and SBIRS GEO 2 imaged

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Time to go back to basics. The photo above is part of an image I shot in the evening of January 20-21, 2016. It shows a number of commercial geosynchronous satellites and two classified satellites: AEHF 2 and SBIRS-GEO 2.

This image was shot from Leiden center using a Canon EOS 60D and a Zeiss Sonnar 2.8/180 mm lens and 15 seconds exposure (ISO 1000). It shows an approximately 2.5 degree wide field in Hydra, just east of alpha Hydra. The sky was extremely transparent, and to my surprise a waxing moon in the sky was no real hindrance: conditions I do not encounter often!

Most prominent on the image (a crop out of a larger image) is the commercial Astra 1 group, a group of four satellites well known to European owners of satellite tv dishes. Just north of the group is AMOS 5, an Israeli commercial communications satellite. It suffered a malfunction on 21 November 2015, as a result of which all contact was lost.

Also visible in the image are the commercial satellite Arabsat 5C and the Chinese satellite Tianlian 1-03. The latter satellite is a Tracking- and Data Relay satellite that plays a similar role to the US TDRS satellites. The Tianlian satellites are specifically meant to relay data to and from Chinese crewed Shenzou spacecraft.

Two classified US satellites are visible in the image.

On the right is AEHF 2 (2012-019A), the second Advanced Extremely High Frequency military communications satellite. The AEHF system is a replacement for the older Milstar system, and use of this US system is shared by the military of a number of  countries, at this moment the UK, Canada, and my own country, the Netherlands. It is eventually to consist of 6 satellites, of which 3 have been launched as of early 2016. The satellites have been designed to be resilient to jamming and intercept efforts.

On the left is SBIRS GEO 2 (2013-011A), the second geostationary satellite in the Space Based Infra Red System, a series of US infra-red Early Warning satellites meant to detect missile launches. I discussed this system in detail in several recent blogposts, as this system might have played a role in potentially detecting the missile that shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. Indeed, the satellite imaged here, SBIRS GEO 2, is one of the SBIRS satellites that had sight on the Ukraine at that time.

The Parliament Hearing

Last Friday was the MH17 hearing of the committee for Foreign Affairs of Dutch Parliament in the Dutch Parliament building in the Hague. I had been  invited as an external expert to this hearing (see a previous post), with the task to brief the parliament members on what military satellite systems from what countries might have observed the disaster, and could potentially provide useful information with a view on the criminal prosecution of the case.

An audio record of the block of the hearing that featured my presence can be downloaded here (it is in Dutch of course). Related to this, I also appeared on national television that evening (video here and below) in a long item in EénVandaag, a news background program broadcast nationwide at 6 pm. After the hearing, I also did a 20-minute live interview on national radio (audio here, below the video on that page).

It was quite an experience to be in this role, a role which I never had expected to have to play when I wrote my first blogpost on this all. I spent the better part of January doing research into even the most remotely possible questions I could imagine, digging up information, checking and re-checking facts, and writing the position paper.

The full hearing itself took 8 hours (I myself only attended some two hour of these though), and the block that included me took one hour (from 12:00 to 13:00 CET). I shared this block with Paul Riemens, who is the head of Dutch air traffic control; and prof. Piet van Genderen, who is a radar expert from Delft University.

Letter by the Minister

In the evening before the hearing, the Minister of Justice and Security, Van der Steur, had suddenly dispatched a letter to Parliament in answer to questions by Omtzigt , in which he stated that the prosecutor did receive radar and satellite data, and that in their perception there was "no need" for additional requests of those. He also mentioned that the prosecutor had insight in these data "through the MIVD"  (the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service) by means of "ambtsberichten" (i.e. brief statements on what the data show, not the data itself). The latter suggested to me, that the data are not declassified, and perhaps will not be declassified. Which is odd and unnecessary, as well as unwise, as I will discuss later in this blogpost.

The timing (combined with the fact that similar earlier questions by MP's Omtzigt and Sjoerdsma got unanswered) suggests that the Minister's letter to Parliament was a direct response to the position papers by Van Genderen and me, so it does seem our input into this discussion had some immediate effect.

Parliament members present

Parliament members attending the block of the hearing which I participated in, were Michiel Servaes (Labour party); Harry van Bommel (Socialist Party); Pieter Omtzigt (Christian Democrats); Louis Bontes (list Bontes/Van Klaveren, a right-wing splinter party split off from Wilders' Party for Freedom); Raymond de Roon (Party for Freedom); Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (Democrats '66); and Han ten Broeke (Party for Freedom and Liberty). Chairman of the hearing was MP Fred Teeven (Party for Freedom and Liberty: who incidentally was State Secretary at the Justice and Security department at the time of the MH17 tragedy), who is vice-chairman of the parliament committee in question.

some of the Parliament members during the hearing:
 f.l.t.r. Ten Broeke, Servaes, van Bommel and Omtzigt

Hearing proceedings and questions

Riemens, Van Genderen and me all three got a few minutes to present our information to the MP's. My main message to the committee was that there are a lot of military systems, from several countries including more than one ally of our country, that might provide useful information. I briefly outlined what kind of systems might provide what information, mentioning SBIRS, but also SIGINT and IMINT.

Next, the parliament members in the committee asked us further questions and clarifications. Servaes asked me which indications I had whether the Dutch prosecutor really needed more satellite data (harking back to the suggestions in the Minister's letter of the previous evening). Related to that, Van Bommel asked me whether my plea for an attempt to get these data and get them declassified was in the interest of transparency, or had some other additional goal. He also asked whether these data might help to further restrict the location from where the missile was fired or not. Ten Broeke asked me (and Van Genderen) for my opinion on the current government position in this.

answering questions

I amongst others answered that I was not a lawyer or attorney, but that it seemed to me that declassifying the evidence was crucial in order to be able to use them for a criminal prosecution, as well as indeed in the general interest of transparency and accountability. There are so many questions around this subject, and so many (conspiracy-) theories and different views (not to speak of desinformation floating around), that the final conclusions should be verifiable to all (after the hearing, I pointed out in the radio interview that it is also very important to the families of the victims to be able to judge these results, something also pointed out in the tv item by a father who lost his son in the tragedy).

In this context I also pointed to remarks made a year ago (17 Dec 2014) by Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of  European and Eurasian affairs in the US government, and read these out loud to the Parliament members. During a Q & A session at the American Enterprise Institute, Nuland answered questions by a Russian reporter and said that the US government had already shared data with the Netherlands, but moreover that she expected that there:

"..will be, I believe, in the context of the Dutch case, when they roll it out – they are likely to ask us to declassify some of that, and I think we will be able to help in that regard"

In other words: she not only expects a request for declassification from the Dutch government: but she also expects that the US Government will answer positively to that request!

During the hearing, and partly in response to some of the questions,  I warned the parliament members that if these satellite data would not be pursued and a request to declassify them not be made, this could possibly stimulate a lingering feeling that the Dutch prosecution left data unchecked or unreveiled. I told them that if things transpired this way (the wording of the letter by the Minister was not so encouraging in this respect) I feared that this would potentially provide handles to those parties with an interest in denying the conclusions of the investigation, to question these results.

Omtzigt asked me if there were earlier precedents of these kinds of data being declassified. There are: in the hearing I provided the examples of infrared data on meteoric fireballs (which these satellites also register) being released to astronomers for analysis; the declassification of satellite imagery in order to argue the necessity of the invasion of Iraq at the start of the second Gulf War; and China providing satellite imagery of potential floating debris in the case of the search for the missing MH370 aircraft.

Sjoerdsma asked me whether, in case the data would be declassified and supplied, our country had the expertise to independently analyse them and verify the claims made from them. For the infrared data I answered that I am not sure, so could answer neither positively nor negatively. For IMINT and SIGINT, our country certainly has that expertise, both within our own military as well as on Dutch universities.

De Roon wanted me to clarify further which countries had what satellite systems. Bontes asked me whether the fact that we were now so reliant on foreign data from foreign systems, might be an argument to start to build, as a country, surveillance satellite capacity ourselves (I think I am really not the person to answer that question).

During my answering all these questions, van Bommel additionally asked me in what phase of the criminal investigation these data should be made public, and whether it was perhaps too early for that in the current phase.

To the latter I can agree, although (again) I am no lawyer or attorney. But I can understand that perhaps, in this phase of the inquiry, the prosecutors do not want to publicly show their hand of cards.

I do have some concern though, about whether at the end of the trajectory these data are going to be made public, in the interest of verifiability. In my opinion, they should. I find the wording of the letter by the Minister of 21 January 2016 however not very promising in that respect.

The  contributions by the other invited experts contained some significant points. Van Genderen for example made very clear that having the secondary radar data is not enough. He also made very clear that Ukrainian claims that all their radar systems were down for maintenance that day, are hard to believe, as that is against what is normal. Riemens made clear that normally, the air traffic controller on duty will be heard in the investigation (which has not happened in this case) and that radar data normally are available within an hour. Later during the hearing, well-known lawyer Knoops made very clear that without the original raw (radar, satellite) data being available, the prosecution would have no leg to stand on.

SIGINT, IMINT and MH17

(this post continues discussions in earlier posts on possible classified space-based observations of the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the Ukraine in 2014)

My position paper written for the Dutch Parliament Foreign Affairs committee hearing of Jan 22 (see my previous post) has a strong focus on infra-red detections of a missile by SBIRS. There are however a few other relevant aspects of Space Based observations in connection to the MH17 disaster that I could not cover in the space available to me for that paper.

In this post, I will provide some brief additional information about:

1) potential roles for IMINT satellites;
2) the positions of SIGINT satellites.


Optical and radar IMINT

1. optical IMINT

Both (unclassified) commercial and (classified) military satellite systems for high-resolution optical imagery (Image Intelligence, IMINT) exist, and both sources will be discussed below.

Optical and radar imagery obtained in the hours before, as well as during the event, might be used to look for missile systems, both on the Ukrainian as well as separatist sides of the front, in a wide circle around the site of the shootdown. It could also be used to verify the reconstruction of the purported movements of a Russian BUK system published by citizen journalist team Bellingcat, a study which is not uncontested. The Bellingcat team places the BUK in certain places at certain times, and if space-based imagery (either military or commercial) for those locations and times exist they could perhaps verify these claims.

The US military has one classified system of optical satellites with a (much-) better-than-1-meter capability: the KH-11 IMPROVED CRYSTAL/Evolved Enhanced CRYSTAL (aka 'Keyhole' or 'KENNAN') which reportedly (and theoretically, from known 2.4 meter mirror size specs) have a resolution in the order of  10-20 cm.

Mid-2014 this system consisted of four satellites: USA 161, USA 186, USA 224 and USA 245. All of these have been discussed on this blog before and are tracked by our amateur network.

We have accurate tracking data on three of these, USA 161, USA 224 and USA 245 for the days around 17 July 2014 and hence can pinpoint when these potentially had the crash area in their sight to better than a minute. For USA 186, which was actively manoeuvering around that time and for which we have a gap in our coverage form June to August 2014, pass times are a bit less certain and constrained to about 20-30 minutes accuracy.

First, we can positively affirm that one of the KH-11, USA 161 (2001-044A) actually had the Ukraine in its potential view during the incident at 13:20 UT:

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Please note well: this does however NOT mean that USA 161 delivered imagery of the event. A number of factors should be taken into account:

1. the cloud cover at that moment, which might hinder imagery;
2. the crash site is located quite in the perifery of the satellites footprint area;
3. these satellites do likely not make images continuously, but only if commanded to do so, for specific areas of interest;
4. there is the question of whether USA 161 was still operational at that time. It was the oldest of the on-orbit KH-11, being launched 14 years earlier. Only a few months later it was de-orbitted, so it was clearly at the end of its lifetime.

In addition to their KH-11 system, the US military hires space on commercial high resolution optical IMINT satellites from the US commercial firm Digitalglobe (the same firm that supplies Google Earth with satellite imagery).  

Digitalglobe operates a number of satellites with a better-than-1-meter capability: Geoeye-1 (0.4 meter resolution), and Worldview 1, 2 and 3 (0.25-0.50 meter resolution). Most of the satellite imagery that the US Department of Defense supplies to the press (when briefing on the military situation in e.g. North Korea, Syria and Libya) comes from these commercial satellites.

Imagery from these same Digitalglobe satellites is also available commercially, to any interested party with money. And in addition to DigitalGlobe, the European company Airbus Defense and Space also offers commercial high-resolution optical imagery from its SPOT and Pléiades satellites. Pléiades 1A and 1B offer a 0.5 meter resolution. SPOT 5 and 6 offer a 2.5-1.5 meter resolution.

Accurate orbital data from non-classified sources are available for all the commercial imagers for 17 July 2014. The satellites in question made several daylight passes over the area in the morning of July 17, 2014, between 8:00 and 10:00 GMT, i.e. during the 3 to 5 hours before the shootdown, a period when the skies were still less clouded.

This does not mean that they necessarily made imagery of course. Yet any imagery these commercial Digitalglobe and Airbus satellites did make on July 16, 17 and 18 have the advantage that they are not "classified", unlike the US military data, meaning that they could be used and published without diplomatic problems by the Dutch government in the Dutch criminal investigation into the disaster.

I would therefore expect the Dutch OM to either buy or subpoena all potential Digitalglobe and Airbus imagery from these dates. They can be used to reconstruct missile system positions in the area (both on the Ukrainian, the separatist and Russian sides) within range of the shootdown location, and they can be used to hunt for missile transports (see my earlier remarks about the Bellingcat claims). The Dutch Air Force has an imagery analysis unit that is well suited to help with such an analysis. Including imagery from the days before and after the incident as well is useful to look for differences between imagery of these respective dates.


2. Radar IMINT

The US military has two systems for high resolution radar IMINT: the Lacrosse (ONYX) system of which currently only one satellite, Lacrosse 5 (2005-016A) is left on-orbit, and the radar component of the Future Imagery Architecture (known as TOPAZ), consisting of three satellites: FIA Radar 1, 2 and 3 (2010-046A, 2012-014A and 2013-072A). These systems should be capable of providing imagery with sub-meter resolutions, and like optical imagery, they can be used to look for the presence of missile systems in the area. They have the added bonus that they are not hampered by cloud cover, unlike optical imagery.

Apart from the USA, the German military also operates a radar satellite system, the SAR-Lupe satellites. The French military likewise operates its own radar satellite system, the Hélios system. Japan operates the IGS system (which includes both optical and radar satellite versions).

All of these satellites made passes over the Ukraine at one time or another on July 17 2014, so all of them might have provided useful imagery.  FIA Radar 3 made a pass right over the area in question near 11:43 UT for example, some 1.5 hours before the tragedy. FIA Radar 2 made a pass over the area at 18:00 UT, 4.5 hours after the shootdown. These are just a few examples.

Given what was happening in the area around this time, and the strong concern of NATO and the EU about this, it is almost certain that imagery of the area was collected by these US, German and French satellite systems.


SIGINT

My position paper briefly mentions that a number of countries have space-based SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) capacities. This does not only concern capacities for (for example) the NSA to tap into your cellphone and satellite telephone conversations: another important strategic aspect of space-based SIGINT is the capacity to detect radar and telemetry signals from enemy weapons systems. Such detections allow identification of the used weapons system (each system has its own 'signature'). They also allow, according to remarks by the then NRO director Bruce Carlson in a speech from September 2010 at the National Space Symposium, geolocation of the source of this radar signal (in the case of MH17: geolocation of the Target Acquisition Radar of the launch unit).

The US military has a number of SIGINT systems in several types of orbits: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) below 1500 km which allows coverage of a few minutes during a pass over a target; and Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) and geosynchronous orbit (GEO), which allow to monitor targets for many hours (HEO) to continuously (GEO) from distances of 36 000+ km.

France has a number of SIGINT satellites in LEO. China no doubt has SIGINT satellites too, as does Russia. For the moment I will focus on the US systems. I must ad that I did check the French systems as well but none of the French systems (ESSAIM and Elisa, both in LEO) had sight of the Ukraine at that time.

The US systems, under the catch-all codename ORION, include the TRUMPET-FO which move in HEO. One of them is USA 184, mentioned before in the discussion of SBIRS as it has a piggyback SBIRS capacity in addition to its main SIGINT role.

There are also the big MENTOR satellites in GEO, plus two MERCURY satellites also in GEO, and the older VORTEX system. Of these systems, TRUMPET-FO, MENTOR and MERCURY are certainly still active based on their orbital behaviour.

The map below shows the positions of those satellites in this series for which we have enough tracking data to allow a reconstruction of their positions and footprints on 17 July 2014, 13:20 UT and which had the MH17 crash area within potential view:

click map to enlarge

Again: this does NOT necessarily mean that all of these satellites were actively monitoring the Ukraine at that time. Quite a number of them will have been tasked on the Middle East.

Yet, given the strong NATO interest in events in the Ukraine at that time, notably the rising concern about advanced surface-to-air missile systems following the shootdown of a Ukrainian Antonov-26 a few days earlier, I would be surprised if none of them monitored the Ukraine at all.


A clarification note on the position of USA 184 (SIGINT/SBIRS)

In my position paper written for the Dutch Parliament Foreign Affairs committee meeting coming Friday, I included this map with the positions of three SBIRS satellites with view on the Ukraine at that time:

click map to enlarge

I should point out here that there is some leeway in the exact position of USA 184, depending on whether it made a corrective manoeuvre to maintain its Mean Motion of about 2.00615 revolutions/day or not since the day we last observed it.

If it did, its position would be slightly more westward compared to the position depicted above, i.e. in a position just north of Scotland rather than above the Norwegian coast:

Let me be clear: this does NOT influence the conclusions of my position paper: the MH17 crash site in both variants is well within the field of view as seen from USA 184, i.e. the satellite could potentially provide both Infra-red and SIGINT detections. In the interest of accuracy, I thought I should however mention it here.


Acknowledgement -  I thank Mike McCants (USA) and Ted Molczan (Canada) for discussions about satellite positions, notably concerning USA 184.

Parliament hearing MH17, 22 Januari 2016

On 22 January 2016, the permanent committee on Foreign Affairs of Dutch Parliament will hold a full day of hearings/round table talks related to the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014. The hearings are in preparation for a debate about the Dutch Government's reactions to and actions with regard to the ongoing investigations into the disaster.

On the invitation of MP Pieter Omtzigt, I have been invited as an external expert to this hearing. The committee members want to get informed regarding the possibility of foreign (notably US) Space-Based military observations of the event, i.e. satellite observations by systems such as SBIRS. This is a topic I have covered earlier on this blog.

The agenda of the hearing (in Dutch) is here. On request of the committee, I have written a brief position paper on the topic (again: in Dutch) which can be found here.

Video of the hearing will be live-streamed through this link. My contribution is scheduled for 12:00-13:00 CET (11:00-12:00 GMT).

Flight MH17, satellite data and yesterday's hearing of Dutch Parliament with the Dutch Safety Board

Yesterday I posted (in the context of what appears to refer to SBIRS detections of the recent aircraft crash in the Sinai) on lingering questions with regard to potential US military satellite data on the shootdown of flight MH17 over east Ukraine in July 2014. I blogged about this a year ago too.

Yesterdays recapitulation was timely in many ways, as yesterday afternoon saw a special hearing between Dutch Parliament members and the Dutch Safety Board (DSB), the agency which investigated the tragedy. The latter published its report on their finding in October, leading to yesterday's special Parliament hearing. Several Dutch MP's questioned the DSB representatives about what they perceive as ambiguities and missing information in the report. Among them, potential satellite data.

Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt especially focussed  on potential US military satellite data (including SBIRS data) in his questions, partially basing his information on this very blog. For those of you who understand Dutch, the most relevant of his questions pertaining to satellite data start at 10:30 in the video snippet at this link.

The answers by the DSB representatives were interesting: they seem to indicate that there are indeed satellite data, although it was not entirely clear what satellite data they were talking about: SBIRS IR detections of the missile launch and ascend trajectory, or KH-11 optical imagery of the relevant parts of the Ukraine before and after the shootdown. Their answers also seem to indicate that DSB members were given access to these data, but cannot publicly report on it because "State Secret"...

For truth finding, these data are extremely important. They are likely much less ambiguous than the reconstructions from the missile impact damage to the aircraft on which the DSB report is basing the reconstructed launch location of the missile. As a Dutch citizen, the country that lost 198 citizens in the tragedy, I sincerely hope that the US government does the right thing and will eventually release enough of these data to confirm where the missile that killed so many innocent men, women and children was launched from. That would be the only ethical and humane thing to do. In a democracy, especially where truth finding is concerned, some things are more important than upholding secrecy, certainly in connection to such a terrible tragedy as this involving the killing of such a large number of citizens of a long time US ally.

Satellite observations and the Russian Metrojet crash in the Sinai [updated]

[updated 3 Nov 2015 14:00 UT]

On 31 October 2015 near 4:13 UTC, Kogalymavia Flight 9268, a Russian commercial flight by airliner Metrojet, crashed in the Egyptian Sinai desert, tragically killing all 224 people on board.

NBC News now reports that according to a US "senior defense official", around the time of this tragedy, a heat signal has been detected over the Sinai by "an American infrared satellite". According to NBC News, the heat signal detection points to an explosion (either mid-air or when the aircraft hit the ground), and the quoted official reportedly said that there is "no indication" that a surface-to-air missile hit the aircraft.

The satellite system in question which detected the heat signal is most likely the classified SBIRS (Space-Based InfraRed System), which I discussed before in the context of the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the eastern Ukraine a year ago.

It is one of two US military systems (there is the older DSP now being replaced by SBIRS) meant for the early detection of (intercontinental) missile launches. These satellites look for the infrared (heat) signature of such launches. For more details see my earlier post on MH17, and this detailed information sheet by US Defense itself available on the web.

After reading NBC's claim of a satellite detection of this latest aircraft tragedy, I checked which of the SBIRS satellites would have had coverage of the area in question at 31 October 2015, 4:13 UT.

click image to enlarge

Two SBIRS satellites had excellent coverage: the geostationary SBIRS GEO 2 (2013-011A) satellite at longitude 20 E, and the piggyback SBIRS package on the TRUMPET-FO satellite USA 184 (2006-027A) in a Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO).

click images to enlarge

The apparent quick confirmation of a SBIRS detection of the Sinai crash reported by NBC News not only shows the capabilities of the SBIRS system, but also begs the question why such information is still lacking with regard to the shootdown of MH17 over the Ukraine a year ago.

In my country, which lost 192 citizens in that tragedy, the downing of MH17 and the question of who is responsible for it are still a hot topic, newly fueled by the recent release of the report by the Dutch Safety Board which shows it was a BUK system that downed the aircraft.

There are tantalizing clues that SBIRS did detect the 2014 shootdown over the Ukraine: the day after the MH17 tragedy unfolded, a "senior US official" reportedly told CNN that a US military system "saw a heat signature at the time the airliner was hit".

This is a very similar statement as the one now reported in connection to the Sinai crash. At the time, I showed that three SBIRS satellites (the same two as indicated above, plus SBIRS GEO 1) had coverage of the Ukraine crash location.

Following that CNN report, this apparent infrared detection has gone into oblivion: there is no mention of it for example in the report of the Dutch Safety Board: the reconstruction of the area where the missile could have been launched is completely based on modelling from the damage pattern to the aircraft's cockpit.

I find it hard to believe, certainly given the anonymous "senior US official" quote to CNN directly after the disaster, that there are no SBIRS detections of the MH17 shootdown.

NATO interest in the area was high at that time, after all this was a quickly escalating conflict right at the border of NATO's and the European Union's influence sphere. The general perception was (and is) that Russia, increasingly seen as the new/old enemy of (east-) European freedom, is trying to expand it's own influence sphere into Europe, and is muscle-flexing towards the east European NATO members. Missiles should have been a natural point of interest to NATO, as a Ukrainian military aircraft had been shot down at high altitude in the days before the disaster with what must have been a state-of-the-art Surface-to-Air system, something which should be of concern to NATO, especially given a US military strategy that heavily relies on Air Supremacy. To me it seems that it would be very odd if US military systems like SBIRS were not watching the area.


UPDATE 3 Nov 2015, 14:00-14:30 UT:

In a Twitter conversation, Rainer Kresken rightfully points at  the weather conditions over the relevant part of the Ukraine during the MH17 tragedy. Cloud cover is detrimental to IR detections. But a SAM would still be detectable once it had cleared the cloud cover. According to the report of the Dutch Safety Board, the cloudbase present in the general area around the time of the crash was scattered and between 1000 and 5000 feet (300 meter to 1.5 km) with occasional peaks of the top of the cloud deck to FL350 (350 000 35 000 feet, 10.7 km). These latter were localized thunderstorms. Airfields in the vicinity report scattered clouds at 3300 feet (1 km) and a broken cloud cover at higher altitude, 10000 to 20000 feet (3 to 6 km). This all suggests that a missile would have been visible once clearing 1 km altitude, unless it was cruising through a cumulus tower from a thunderstorm.
Most relevant to me is still that tantalizing CNN quote of a "senior US official" reporting a heat signal, suggesting that there was a SBIRS detection of the missile above the cloud cover.

Observing HEO objects

In wintertime at latitude 51 degrees North, satellites in Low Earth Orbit are mostly invisible except for twilight, as all their passes are completely within the Earth shadow.

This season is therefore the season that I focus on HEO and GEO objects. HEO stands for Highly Elliptical Orbit and is almost synonymous with the more informal name 'Molniya orbit', after a class of Russian communication satellites employed in such orbits.

Military SDS COMSAT USA 198 (SDS 3F5), imaged in Cassiopeia on 4 Jan 2014

Satellites in a Molniya orbit have an orbital period of about 2 revolutions per day, an orbital inclination near 63.4 degrees, perigee at a few hundred kilometers altitude over the southern hemisphere and apogee at altitudes near 36000 km over the Arctic. They spend most of their orbital time near their apogee.The 63.4 degree orbital inclination ensures that perigee keeps at a stable position over the southern hemisphere.

US military payloads and 'unknowns' in Molniya orbit

The advantage of a Molniya orbit is that it allows a good, long duration view of high northern latitudes, including the Arctic region, which are not well visible from a geostationary orbit. This is ideal for communications satellites serving these regions, for SIGINT satellites, and other applications (such as infrared ICBM early warning systems, e.g. SBIRS) that benefit from a long 'stare' and good view of high Northern latitudes.

The US military has several systems in a Molniya orbit (see image above): communication satellites (e.g. two components of the SDS system), several SIGINT satellites (TRUMPET and TRUMPET-FO), and components of the SBIRS system (piggybacked on three TRUMPET-FO SIGINT satellites). Identifiable payloads include:

- TRUMPET 1, 2 and 3 (SIGINT);
- TRUMPET-FO and SBIRS USA 184, 200 and 259 (SIGINT and SBIRS);
- SDS COM satellites USA 179 and 198

There are a couple more which we cannot (yet) tie to a specific launch and function (see note at end of post).

Near their apogee, satellites in Molniya orbit are located high in the sky for my location, and because of their high northern position, they are sun-illuminated and hence visible (typically at magnitudes near +9 to +12) even at midnight and in winter. They move very slowly when near apogee, creating tiny trails on the images.

On December 13, the NRO launched (as NROL-35) a new SIGINT and SBIRS platform into a Molniya orbit: USA 259 (see a previous post). It is currently still actively manoeuvering to attain its final orbit, which makes it an interesting object to track. The image below was taken in late twilight of Jan 4, when the satellite was past its apogee and on its way to perigee. It was 4 minutes early against orbital elements based on observations of only a few days old.

SIGINT/SBIRS satellite USA 259 (NROL-35) imaged in Andromeda in the evening of Jan 4

I image these objects with an old but good Zeiss Sonnar MC f2.8/180 mm telelens (made in the former DDR and sturdy -and heavy- as a tank). This lens has a 67 mm aperture at f 2.8, which means it shows faint objects. As these objects move very slowly, the relatively small FOV is no problem. My observational data from January 4th can be found here and here.

Note: the 'unknowns' in the orbital plot above are objects we track that are not in public orbital catalogues and which we cannot tie to a specific launch. Although some of them certainly are, not all of these need to be payloads: some might be spent rocket stages from launches into HEO.

Observing USA 259 (NROL-35)

On December 13th, 2014, the NRO launched NROL-35 out of Vandenberg AFB into a Molniya orbit. The payload, USA 259 (2014-081A) is most likely a SIGINT, and possibly piggybacks a SBIRS sensor, according to analysts.

USA 259 (NROL-35) imaged by me on 28 December 2014

Our tracking network quite quickly picked up the payload. Peter Wakelin first picked it up from Britain on December 13, followed by Scott Tilley in Canada and Cees Bassa in the Netherlands a few hours later. In the two weeks since, the payload has been observed to be manoeuvering in order to get into its intended orbit.

My own first observations of the payload were done in the evening of December 28 (see image above, taken with the F2.8/180mm Zeiss Sonnar) during short clearings. It had been a clear day, but clouds rolled in around nightfall. The satellite was located high over the Northern Atlantic near aphelion at this time at an altitude of 34500 km, and situated high in the sky in Cepheus as seen from Leiden.

orbital position at time of the photograph

view from the satellite

SBIRS, SIGINT and the MH17 tragedy (updated)

Yesterday 17 July near 13:15 UT, 298 people including at least 173 189 192 of my countrymen perished when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed over the eastern Ukraine, reportedly after being hit by a missile.

This is a terrible tragedy. Among the victims are complete families, including children. It is the start of the holidays in the Netherlands, and the flight carried many Dutch families on their way to their holiday destinations in southeast Asia. My thoughts are with these highly stricken families.

For me personally, it is an unnerving fact that I was about to fly the same route from Amsterdam to southeast Asia only a few days later.

In the wake of the incident, accusations fly between the Ukrainians, pro-Russian separatists and Russians, all accusing each other of being responsible for this tragedy. At the moment it is difficult to say which bits of information floating around are true and which are false. I strongly suspect that the current suspicion against Russian-backed separatists will hold though. Some less ambiguous evidence (e.g. the location of the crash, which is close to the locations where separatists earlier downed two other (military) aircraft) certainly seem to suggest this. But we will see: at the moment, nothing is certain.

Of interest to this blog, is that US Intelligence officials have confirmed that the aircraft was hit by a surface-to-air missile, according to several US media. Senior US officials appear to have told CNN that they detected a radar signal from a surface-to-air missile system being turned on right before the crash, and that they also detected a 'heat signature' at the time the aircraft was lost.

If the CNN report is correct, it is highly likely that the 'heat signature' detection was a space-born detection by the SBIRS system of infra-red early warning satellites. I have written about this satellite system before, in the context of that other recent tragedy with a Malaysian Airlines flight, the disappeared flight MH370.

click image to enlarge

Three of the four SBIRS satellites, SBIRS GEO 1 (2011-019A) and SBIRS GEO 2 (2013-011A) in geostationary orbit and USA 184 (2006-027A) in HEO, had coverage of the area where MH17 went down at the time this happened (17 July 14:15 GMT, see image above).

SBIRS and SIGINT platform USA 184, imaged on 20 March 2014

SBIRS GEO 2 imaged on 20 June 2014

It is possible that the quoted detection of a missile radar tracking system activation around the time of the disaster was done by satellites too. Several SIGINT and ELINT satellites cover this area, including various MENTOR (ORION) satellites and one MERCURY satellite in GEO, and USA 184, which is both a TRUMPET-FO SIGINT satellite and a SBIRS platform, in HEO. That these SIGINT satellites amongst others serve to detect and monitor signals from military radar and missile systems, is known. Given the interest of the USA and NATO in closely watching military developments in the Ukraine conflict, it is almost certain that some of these are targetting the area.

The question is, whether these satellites can help pinpoint the location from where the missile was launched, and hence provide an indication of who did it (Ukrainian forces, separatist militia, or the Russians).

I suspect they can. If the SIGINT detections were indeed done by satellites, it is known that the US recently made large progress in geolocating the origin of detected signals. In a speech from September 2010 available on the NRO website, NRO director Bruce Carlson specifically remarked on the NRO's increasing capability to geolocate using SIGINT:

"I will tell you that just in the last 24 months, we’ve improved the accuracy of geo-location by nearly an order of magnitude, and we’re going to continue to do that and bring it down. We’re getting to the point where here very, very shortly, within the very near term, we will be able to target using signals intelligence". 

If they indeed have a SIGINT detection of the missile's radar system (and the CNN quote seems to say that), the character of the signature might yield information on what missile system was used (i.e. if it was indeed an SA-17/BUK).

Likewise, and although as far as I know no exact public information is available on the accuracy of this kind of detections (update: but see the update at the end of this post!) , I suspect that the  'heat signature' detections of the missile launch,  if indeed SBIRS infra-red detections, are also accurate enough to geolocate the launch site (and whether that is in Ukranian held, or separatist held territory).

A SBIRS platform has two sensors: one in staring mode, and one in scanning mode. The staring scanning mode sensor watches for heat signatures over a wide semi-global area. The scanning staring sensor targets specific regions, and when the staring scanning sensor detects a signature, the scanning staring sensor (at least according to some sources) can be employed to further pinpoint and track this event (more sources amongst others here, here and here). The goal of SBIRS reportedly is to be able to track launches, pinpoint launch sites and accurately predict potential target locations from the tracking data. That needs quite accurate tracking.

(note added: a 1-hour timezone conversion error in the original version of this post has been corrected)

Update 19/07/2014: Daniel Fischer managed to dig up this unclassified presentation from 2006, which shows that SBIRS indeed can detect SAM. Pages 2 and 3 mention the capability to pinpoint the launch location. 

Rainer Kresken has raised the legitimate question of the cloud cover present at the time of the shootdown. Water vapour obscures Infra Red, which means the cloud cover might have blocked detection of the initial launch phase of the SAM. The SIGINT detection of the missile system radar does not suffer from this problem.

[UPDATED] Three UNID's in GEO/GTO/HEO/MEO, SBIRS GEO 2, and Lacrosse 5 has manoeuvered

Updated 14:35 UT (Jun 23) to reflect that I found a third UNID on my imagery after writing the original post

click image to enlarge

Saturday/Sunday night 21/22 June was very clear. As I had some trouble getting to sleep, I decided to make use of it to do a survey of the GEO belt, from my secondary site Cospar 4355 which is in the polder just outside of town, some 10-15 minutes by bicycle. The sky is a bit darker there and I have a better view to low elevations. Using the 1.4/85mm Samyang lens, I can expose twice as long as I can from my regular town center site 4353. The downside: so many objects on the images to identify and measure....

This observing site, in a polder park with meadows and polder ditches, is very tranquile. A choir of frogs was chanting during my observations, and meadow birds were adding their voice too. As I was observing, a low blanket of ground fog started to form, with my camera on tripod popping up just above it.


Two Three UNID's

At the moment I am still slowly working myself through the 54 images taken, identifying objects, but I can already report that I captured two three UNID objects (for positions on the 3rd see here), two in GTO/GEO and one in MEOor HEO. They are not in the Space-Track catalogue nor in our classified catalogue.

click image to enlarge

UNID 1 was observed as a small trail on several images taken between 23:05:32 and 23:23:32 UT (June 21). The 15 second image above shows it near the SIGINT satellite Mentor 4 (2009-001A) and is the first image that captured it. It looks like something in GTO and a very cautious orbit fit to this short 18 minute observation arc indeed suggests a GTO-like, roughly 13160 x 36945 km, 12.8 degree inclined orbit with a period of ~1.6 revolutions per day:

UNID 1                                               13160 x 36945 km
1 00000U 00000X   14172.96808160 0.00000000  00000-0  00000+0 0    05
2 00000  12.7577 311.8608 3783132 187.8049 143.4679  1.55784798    00

click image to enlarge

UNID 2 was detected on only two 20 second images taken half a minute apart. It is less trail like (see image above), but slowly moving south when the measurements on the two images are combined. It is either in a somewhat inclined GEO orbit or a GTO object near apogee.

The image above also shows SBIRS GEO 2 (2013-011A), a classified geostationary SBIRS satellite (an Early Warning satellite looking for missile launches in Infra-Red). In addition, an old Russian r/b and a Russian military GLONASS (the Russian equivalent of GPS) satellite are visible. Star trails are slightly blurry because the FOV represents a detail near the edge of the image.

click image to enlarge

[UPDATE] 
UNID 3 was detected close to alpha Serpens in only two 20 second images taken 1 minute apart.  It is clearly trailing. The positions fit either a circular MEO orbit, or a HEO orbit (the observation arc is too short to discriminate). Above, the two images that captured it are shown.


Lacrosse 5 appears to have manoeuvered

The same image that captured UNID 1 also captured the military Radar satellite Lacrosse 5 (2005-016A, see image in top of this post), just as it was emerging from Earth shadow. It was about 54 seconds late relative to 8-day-old elements. That is a lot for only 8 day old elements. Hence it appears to have manoeuvered somewhere in the past few days.