back to article US military SATELLITE suddenly BLOWS UP: 'Temperature spike' blamed

In a story reminiscent of the movie Gravity, near-Earth orbits have a bunch of new space junk chunks to worry about after a satellite exploded. After an event was first noticed by orbital tracking company CelesTrak, the US Air Force has confirmed to Space News that the 20-year-old Defense Meteorological Satellite Program …

  1. x 7

    so who lasered it?

    1. bazza Silver badge

      "so who lasered it?"

      Dunno, but I expect Sean Connery is rushing to get his tux back from the dry cleaners even as we speak. Secret satellite-blasting laser bases in Antarctica are no doubt run by villainous cat fanciers, and it's just the sort of thing to tempt Connery out of retirement. Lets hope the evening wear still fits. And just by luck his replacement is preoccupied with some sort of caper in the Alps at the moment.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Alien

        Chalk it up to P.U.T.I.N.

        He's offing stuff left and right now and probably is behind our perenially non-escape-velocitiing economy too. Remember David Kelly!

        1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

          He was just testing his new gold-inlaid lazor shotgun from his balcony. It was designed to shoot down the Ursa Major, so he just wanted to see if it worked before taking it on his celestial bear hunting trip...

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      The US navy will claim it was a gay suicide pact.

      DHS will claim it was a 5year old on the no-fly list

      NSA will claim it was north korean hackers

      And British nuclear Fuels will claim it that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all.

      1. Christoph

        And the Tea Party will insist that it was Obama

        1. Roland6 Silver badge

          And the US government will demand the extradition of a UK teenager for 'hacking' super secret and secure US military computers, when in fact the teenager had accidentally gained accessed to said systems in their quest to search out new Minecraft worlds...

      2. Terje

        mmm Douglas Adams... Now I need to get my copy of The long dark teatime of the soul down from the bookcase.

    3. David Given
    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      who lasered it?

      it was busy trying to heat its sensors to 'prove global warming' but in reality the programmers were paid by the Koch brothers..

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: who lasered it?

        logh veQ bach, qatlh waH pagh SuvwI' Dotlh bIt DaHoHmeH laH.

        DoS Sumqu' ghob 'e' wItI'nI Smo'.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    A satellite overheated and exploded??

    Did it have a demolition charge onboard or something? I guess if there was a decent amount of maneuvering fuel onboard, that might explode, but my understanding was that satellites didn't carry lots of combustible fuel, but something more akin to composite fuel that burned when mixed--like the old Apollo command and lunar excursion modules.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A satellite overheated and exploded??

      Even then, it has to be mixed up in a enclosed space. Any problem with the fuel system is more likely to lead it to just leaking into space. So this is seems to be the case of "this is not the satellite you are looking for".

    2. king_tut

      Re: A satellite overheated and exploded??

      Satellites in general use Hydrazine for propellant, which they need to often tweak their orbit. In addition, some military satellites carry extra as they are expected to change orbit quite often in their lifetime.

      Hydrazine is a pretty dangerous chemical, which can definitely go boom in certain circumstances. There's a few different variants, some use a catalyst, whereas others are pairs which are stored separately. The separates are hypergolic - all these need to do is mix and they go boom.

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: A satellite overheated and exploded??

      "my understanding was that satellites didn't carry lots of combustible fuel, but something more akin to composite fuel that burned when mixed"

      Hydrazine is the usual chemical fuel of choice in satellites. No need to mix anything.

      Temp spike and explosion is a good indicator it hit something small enough to not be tracked but big enough to pierce the chassis and fuel tanks (which are essentially big plastic bags).

      Even a paint fleck can do a lot of damage at orbital velocities - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Space_debris_impact_on_Space_Shuttle_window.jpg - and the current tracking systems can't see anything smaller than about 4-5cm across.

      A single 5mm nut would be more than sufficient to obliterate a microsat or kill/disable a small one.

      The current orbital situation has been likened to a room full of armed mousetraps. At some point the debris from collisions causes a cascade of subsequent collisions and things are getting closer and closer to that point as more mousetraps enter the space.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A satellite overheated and exploded??

        "The current orbital situation has been likened to a room full of armed mousetraps"

        So anybody with the ability to lift things into orbit and make them go "BANG" should be able to cause havoc. Which is only sensible if you don't have any orbital assets to lose, or believe that causing havoc disadvantages others far more than you. And logically (to avoid retaliation) you'd need to pretend you were really only putting a monkey into space, and it went wrong.

        Monkeys! Turn down offers of free space flight from all less developed countries, the return ticket is not valid.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: A satellite overheated and exploded??

          "So anybody with the ability to lift things into orbit and make them go "BANG" should be able to cause havoc. "

          Where havoc includes "Nobody gets to go up there - or past that level either - for the next few hundred years"

          Imagine a world with no new Geostationary or GPS birds.

    4. cray74

      Re: A satellite overheated and exploded??

      "Did it have a demolition charge onboard or something?"

      A fair amount of the debris in orbit is from exploding upper stages and abandoned satellites. Common causes include:

      1) Remnant fuel fumes over-pressurizing tanks; or monopropellants exploding

      2) Batteries exploding when overheated

      Both are issues when upper stages and old satellites get ignored and are no longer commanded to hold their temperature-controlling attitudes (or run out of gas to do so).

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivation_(spacecraft)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris#Boosters

  3. Mikey

    Could possibly have been batteries overcharging, and subsequently going pop in a rather violent fashion. Other than the smaller possibility of any maneuvering fuel exploding as suggested above, I can't readily bring to mind anything else on a sat that would go bang in such a destructive manner.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Could it have been hit by something?

      Man made or natural space debris. Maybe that would show up as a change in average velocity of the pieces though.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It was one of those cheap chinese chargers again.

      Certainly wasn't Apple's fault.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Re. splatellite

      "hydrogen + oxygen has an alarming tendency to go BOOM as Apollo 13 mission commander Jim Lovell discovered to his cost."

      There was no hydrogen involved in the Apollo 13 explosion.

      The tank heater wiring insulation was damaged 5-6 years prior to launch and when he turned on the power there was a spark inside the tank - the resulting oxygen-fed fire generated a huge overpressure inside the tank, which popped.

      http://www.space.com/8193-caused-apollo-13-accident.html

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Re. splatellite

      "Could have been the space equivalent of a BLEVE"

      Extremely unlikely.

      This sat was 2 decades old.

      The tech was probably 10 years old when it launched because there's usually that much delay between a bird being laid out and launched (once you build a spec you don't deviate from it and you _certainly_ don't include newer tech without re-engineering from scratch,)

      Space-tech normally lags "state of the art" by another decade as it takes that long to prove reliability - just look at the type of microprocessors currently being launched (a lot of the justification for continued use of 90nm processes is radiation robustness)

      In all likelihood it had NiCads as the battery technology of choice.

      (Disclosure, I work closely with spacecraft engineers and scientists. The above are all answers given to common questions about the age of technology on launches.)

      In my opinion this was the result of a microdebris hit. We'll find out soon enough in the investigation.

  5. Mark 85

    Hit other space junk?

    Possible it hit something or something hit it. I'm waiting to see if anyone takes credit (ISIS or North Korea?) or who gets blamed (North Korea or Lizard Squad?).

  6. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    The big quesion is

    Has anyone seen George Clooney lately?

  7. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    450 nautical miles up

    High enough that the resultant junk will be there for quite a while.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: 450 nautical miles up

      They will do anything to avoid metric won't they.

      1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

        Re: 450 nautical miles up

        > They will do anything to avoid metric won't they.

        In the US Navy?

        You have no idea how superior nautical miles are to the French equivalent.

        1. Uffish

          Re: how superior nautical miles are ...

          So superior that the French, and everyone else too, use it. However the perfidious French have had their revenge, by international agreement the nautical mile has been set at 1,852 metres exactly.

        2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: 450 nautical miles up

          >You have no idea how superior nautical miles are to the French equivalent.

          For navigating at sea on a great circle - they are ideal (well assuming you are doing your navigation using astronomical sightings and a stop watch and don't have a calculator)

          For orbital mechanics they are less obviously the ideal choice

  8. x 7

    Any chance it was the USS Ponce having fun?

  9. Stevie

    Bah!

    Those SPECTRE bastards!

  10. DerekCurrie
    Facepalm

    We Need An Orbital Hoover

    "Space Junk Threat Demands Immediate Action, Experts Say"

    http://www.space.com/20832-space-junk-cleanup-needed.html

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: We Need An Orbital Hoover

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom

      "able to bring down dozens of objects/day" is a worthwhile target, given the "natural" rate is ~1/day

  11. tekHedd

    Defense Meterological Satellite

    What, exactly, is "defense meterology?" Some offshoot of strategic weather systems management?

    1. cray74

      Re: Defense Meterological Satellite

      "What, exactly, is "defense meterology?" Some offshoot of strategic weather systems management?"

      Just the military trying to predict weather, same way as civilian meteorologists. Defense meteorologists and their satellites attempt to keep generals and admirals informed of weather conditions because so many military operations hinge on weather.

      In the case of the US, it was the Defense Department that had the budget and political clout to fund one of the first useful weather satellite programs. The DoD wanted to have a pet, private weather satellite network.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satellite_Program

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Defense Meterological Satellite

        It's offense meteorology you really need to worry about

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Defense Meterological Satellite

        " so many military operations hinge on weather."

        One of the most oft-cited operations: D-Day.

  12. Florida1920
    Pint

    It only wanted a beer

    Temperature spike caused loss of attitude control. Happens all the time around here.

  13. John Gamble
    Boffin

    And Now I've Learned Something New

    Specifically, the two-line element set (Wikipedia page that also references this NASA page).

  14. Dan Paul

    Simple....

    It's just Reagan era Star Wars.... Welcome to this fully functional Death Star. Remarkable that they waited until now to test it out.

  15. x 7

    its an old US Navy satellite which had probably expended most of its fuel and was coming back down again. Rather than run the risk of it arriving in one piece and giving the Russians/Iranians/North Vietnamese/ISIL (name your enemy of the week) a chance of free technology, they lasered it either with a ship-board device (like on the Ponce) or at close range from something like the X-37B.

    They're not going to admit to it as doing so would breach a number of antiproliferation treaties

    1. Scott Wheeler

      They have already demonstrated the capability to destroy an old satellite, so it would appear that either this is not a treaty violation or they don't care: more likely the former I would say.

  16. fremsley

    Happened to an earlier DMSP satellite too

    DMSP F11 exploded in a similar fashion in 2004, so it runs in the family. Only odd thing about this is that the link on Wikipedia to the report of that explosion (inserted 2004) was deleted by an anonymous user in Washington DC in June last year (now reinstated).

    Of course, if you we're going to test your newest hunter-killer tech, then a large, obsolete satellite that you already own would be a great target. Doing it over Antarctica would also keep any prying radars away. But there are four Block 5D2 birds older than F13 which haven't blown up and would make more suitable targets as the OLS onboard F13 was reported as working as late as Jan 5th this year , so simpler battery/fuel explanation is more likely.

    Ref to recorded presentation:

    https://ams.confex.com/ams/95Annual/webprogram/Paper270311.html

  17. Sanctimonious Prick
    Joke

    I Wonder...

    Will we start to see more of these events?

    ;D

  18. Tim Brummer

    DMSP is an Air Force Program, I helped to launch this very satellite on a Titan II SLV from SLC-4W at Vandenberg AFB as a launch operation engineer. The Navy is only peripherally involved in that they use the data acquired.

    More info here on another similar launch. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/dmsp-99d.html

  19. Astarte

    Space Debris

    I used to be able to view near earth space objects on Google Earth. It had KMZ layers for classes of objects and showed orbit data such as periapsis and apoapsis etc. I appears have been withdrawn, disabled or moved.

    Does anyone know how to find it or it's replacement?

  20. WereWoof

    It was The Mysterons trying to destroy S.I.D again.

  21. Bob Dole (tm)

    Sharks..

    My vote is that the Sharks did it. Between their war with the Dolphins and humans making fun of the lasers mounted on their heads, they finally had enough and are exacting revenge.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like