Disappearing satellites
Allen Thomson (thomsona@netcom.com)
Mon, 20 May 1996 10:18:43 -0700
Before leaving on a business trip (to Russia, most interesting) ten days
ago, I posted the following message to a couple of space and intelligence
newsgroups. It isn't exactly on-charter for Seesat, but since it draws
heavily on amateur satellite observers' work I thought it might be
appropriate to post it here anyway, particularly in light of the current
interest in USA 86/116 and NOSS 2-3.
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One of the interesting themes in the recently released House
intelligence community study, IC21, is that foreign "denial and
deception" (D&D) activities are on the increase and need to be
countered. This reminds me of a puzzle which first came up in
connection with the "Where is AFP-731?" thread last winter.
Namely, that the US, mostly meaning the NRO, has taken a series
of actions over the past decade and more which must have
stimulated potentially hostile countries to broaden and improve
their D&D programs against reconnaissance satellites. Since
it's difficult to imagine that this was an intended consequence,
we may be seeing an organization's enthusiasm for technology and
secrecy outstripping its ability to foresee results. (Actually,
the overall irrationality of the NRO's system design process is
another major theme of IC21. More on that in a later posting.)
The first action came in 1983, when the US stopped releasing
current orbital elements for its spysats and became ever more
tardy in reporting their launches and initial orbital elements
to the UN, as required by treaty. (Jim Oberg has apparently
written an article on this.) Presumably this didn't bother the
Soviets much, as they had an independent space tracking
capability. Other countries, however, may have been using the
elements to some extent to keep track of the satellites, and
would have had to reconsider their D&D practices or otherwise
compensate for the lost information. For example, countries
such as Iran and China might have been stimulated to duplicate
the optical tracking capabilities of the amateur satellite
observers (who were tracking the spysats all along).
Next, starting in 1990, there have been at least four
"disappearing" satellites which have been reported or suspected
to be large imaging satellites. (A few others have also
disappeared, but no rumors or circumstances linking them to
imaging satellites have surfaced.) The first of these that I
know of was AFP-731 (aka USA 53, 1990-019 B) itself, followed by
the two primary objects accompanying the NOSS-2 putative ELINT
triplets (USA 59, 1990-50 A, and USA 72, 1991-076 A). The
analytical situation regarding these satellites in the amateur
community is well summarized in the notes accompanying Ted
Molczan's weekly orbital element list; I've appended the
relevant sections to this message. Since the Molczan notes have
been available on the Canadian Space Society bulletin board for
several years and are mirrored on a number of Internet sites,
one has to assume that foreign intelligence services are aware
of the situation from that source, if not from their own space
surveillance and espionage activities.
Most recently, the satellite USA 86, assessed to be a
photoreconnaissance satellite, was apparently (based on booster
configuration and launch time and azimuth) replaced by USA 116
after only three years in orbit. Considering the length of time
it takes to prepare and launch a big satellite on a Titan IV,
the decision to launch USA 116 must have been made not much
later than two and half years after the launch of USA 86. Since
US reconnaissance satellites seem to have normal lifetimes of at
least five years, we're either looking at a failure on orbit
followed by deorbiting after the replacement was launched, or
another "disappearance". Of course, it can't be ruled out that
the single object now in the orbit consistent with the last
amateur observations of USA 86 in 1995 is, in fact, USA 86. In
that case, it's USA 116 that's disappeared.
Whether the Russians, who continue to operate the USSR's
formidable space surveillance system, consider these objects to
be "disappeared" is unknown. It's reasonable, however, to think
that some countries of interest, such as North Korea and Iran,
may not have much better space surveillance capabilities than
the international amateur satellite observers' community does.
These are the folks who must be wondering what's going on, and
what to do about it.
While one could write down a list of candidate explanations
for the disappearances -- one possibility that's been suggested
is that the satellites were boosted into considerably higher
orbits to improve area coverage and dwell time -- it doesn't
really matter what the truth of the matter is. It could even be
that they were simply deorbited or weren't imaging spysats in
the first place. The important thing is the possibility that
they might have been spysats together with the the unusual
circumstances of their disappearances, because it's the
resultant uncertainty and suspicion that must drive the D&D
planning process in other countries. Previously -- at least up
to the cut-off of official orbital elements in 1983 and possibly
up to 1990 if the country had some indigenous space surveillance
capability -- such a program could predict spysat overflights
and schedule nefarious outdoor activities for times when there
were no eyes in the sky. (There's a scene in a Tom Clancy movie
illustrating this: terrorists training at a desert camp look
innocent when a reconnaissance satellite is scheduled to come
over.)
In the present situation, however, the nefarious actors must
take into account the possibility that there are spysats lurking
somewhere unknown in the depths of space, and that possibility
must be factored into the D&D plan -- in other words, scheduling
sensitive activities around satellite passes is no longer a
workable concealment option. D&D in under such conditions
requires different measures than when scheduled concealment can
be employed but in general should be fairly feasible and
straightforward, though perhaps requiring some additional
trouble and expense. It would be interesting to get an
historical assessment of the nature of Nth country D&D programs
and see whether there have been noticeable changes in the
direction of full-time concealment. The IC21 language implies
that that might indeed be the case
Finally, I don't really think this is going to matter much in
a few years. Although the NRO may have been a bit thoughtless in
providing the stimuli for more comprehensive Nth country D&D
efforts, the increasing number of high-resolution commercial and
military satellites is going to produce the same effect. Even
if orbits are known, overflights will eventually occur so often
that scheduled concealment will become impossibly burdensome,
and anyone one who cares will have to assume the essentially
constant presence of overhead reconnaissance.
Here are the excerpts from Ted Molczan's file. A copy of the
entire thing is in
ftp://kilroy.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/space/elements/molczan/new_molc.Z
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These elements are provided as a service to visual observers.
They are uploaded weekly to the Canadian Space Society's BBS in
Toronto, Canada. This is a free BBS, operating 24 h/d, <=2400 B,
8N1, phone 905-458-5907.
The Saga of USA 53 - Found, Lost, Found Again and Lost Again
Satellite sleuths will recall space shuttle mission STS 36,
which deployed a secret CIA/Air Force satellite named USA 53
(90019B, 20516) on March 1, 1990. Aviation Week reported it to
be a large digital imaging reconnaissance satellite. Members of
an observation network which I organized, observed the satellite
between the 2nd and 4th of March. It was deployed into a 62 deg
inclination, 254 km altitude orbit. Early on March 3rd, it
manoeuvred to a 271 km altitude.
Observers noted that the object was extremely bright,
reaching a visual magnitude of -1 under favourable conditions.
Its brightness was similar to that of the very large KH-9 and
KH- 11 imaging reconnaissance satellites. On March 16th, the
Soviet news media reported that several large pieces of debris
from the satellite had been detected in orbit on March 7th, and
suggested that it had exploded. In response to Western media
inquiries, the Pentagon stated that "hardware elements from the
successful mission of STS 36 would decay over the next six
weeks". As expected, the Air Force statement was vague about
the status of USA 53. The debris could have been from a break-
up of the satellite, or simply incidental debris. Only five
pieces of debris were ever catalogued. An intensive search by
observers in late March failed to locate the satellite. Six
months later, the mystery of USA 53 was solved, through the
efforts of three European observers.
On October 19th, 1990, I received a message from Russell
Eberst, stating that he, along with Pierre Neirinck and Daniel
Karcher had found an object in a 65 deg inclination, 811 km
altitude orbit, which did not match the orbit of any known
payload, rocket body or piece of debris. He suspected that the
object could be a secret U.S. payload, and asked me to try and
identify it.
There are many secret U.S. objects in orbit, however, initial
orbital elements, released in accordance with a United Nations
treaty, are available for most of them. Most objects could be
easily ruled out on the basis of orbital inclination. There
remained three recent high inclination launches for which the
U.N. had not yet received elements, and three satellites in near
65 deg inc orbits which had been tracked for a short time by
observers, then lost after they manoeuvred. I found an
excellent match with one of the latter, USA 53. There were no
close matches with any of the other objects. My analysis
revealed that the orbital plane of the mystery object was
almost exactly coplanar with USA 53 on March 7, 1990, the same
date that the Soviets found debris from USA 53 in orbit! This
is a strong indication that the object in question actually is
USA 53, now in a new orbit. The debris may have been connected
with the manoeuvres to the new orbit.
USA 53 was successfully tracked by observers until early
November 1990, when it manoeuvred once more. The orbit was
raised slightly on or about Nov 2nd, which is reflected in the
most current elements. Bad weather prevented further
observation attempts until 7 November, by which time, the object
had made a much more significant manoeuvre, and could no longer
be found. So far, all attempts to once again locate USA 53 have
failed. The following are its last known elements:
USA 53 18.0 4.0 0.0 4.1
1 20516U 90019 B 90309.99079700 -.00002298 00000-0 -95528-3 0 03
2 20516 65.0200 194.0588 0009734 214.9671 144.9440 14.26241038 04
Second Generation NOSS
A Titan 4 rocket, launched on 8 June 1990 from Florida,
carried four payloads into orbit, three of which were
discovered by Russell Eberst to belong to a new, apparently
second generation, NOSS cluster. The satellites are about two
magnitudes brighter than older NOSS satellites; also, there
appears to be no fourth "main" NOSS satellite. The new cluster,
90050B-D, is in the same orbit as the eighth first generation
cluster, 87043.
The orbit of the fourth Titan 4 payload, 90050A (20641) is
unknown. Originally, it was in a 61 deg inclination, 455 km
altitude orbit, but it manoeuvred on the night of 19-20 June
1990, and has not been seen since. It probably deployed the
NOSS cluster in its 63.43 deg inclination, 1116 km altitude
orbit, before manoeuvring to its final orbit. There has been
some informed speculation by news reporters that 90050A is
mainly an imaging reconsat, and that the NOSS cluster was only
a secondary payload.
USA 72 Launch Carried NOSS 2-2 Cluster
Russell Eberst and Pierre Neirinck have discovered that the
USA 72 launch also carried the second cluster of the second
generation NOSS satellites. Element sets for 91076C, D and E
(NORAD #s 21799, 21808, 21809) are in the above listing. Their
orbital plane is about 120 deg west of the NOSS 2-1 cluster.
This discovery proves conclusively that this was not the launch
of Lacrosse 3. It probably carried the same type of payload as
the Titan 4 launch that placed USA 59 and the first cluster of
the second generation NOSS into orbit last year. The big
unresolved question is the mission and orbital location of the
main payloads, USA 59 and USA 72.