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| Europe |
| French spy satellite launched |
| 2004-12-19 |
| A EUROPEAN rocket roared into space from a pad in South America today, placing into orbit a surveillance satellite billed as giving France's military new abilities to spy worldwide. The unmanned craft lifted off smoothly from a launch centre in Kourou, French Guyana, at 1.36pm (3.26am AEDT Sunday) - the third and last launch of an Ariane-5 rocket this year, Arianespace said. The satellite and six smaller scientific ones were placed into orbit about an hour after liftoff. It was the first time in 11 years that an Ariane rocket carried as many as seven satellites on a single launch. The Helios 2A military satellite, the rocket's main cargo, is to rotate in sun-synchronous orbit about 700km above the Earth, officials said. Among expected functions, the satellite is to monitor possible weapons proliferation, prepare and evaluate military operations and digitally map terrain for cruise-missile guidance, the French defence ministry said in a statement yesterday. Helios 2A, weighing 4.2 metric tons, is said to be able to spot objects as small as a textbook anywhere on Earth. Equipped with infrared sensors, it is expected to allow France's military to gather information at night from space for the first time. The optical satellite, while able to read heat signals emanating from Earth, will not be able to see through clouds - unlike satellites with radar technology. Helios 2A is part of a 10-year, 1.8 billion ($3.2 billion) program backed by Belgium and Spain. Such satellites are expected to last at least five years. Among its predecessors, Helios 1B, which was launched in 1999, suffered a power problem and the military let it disintegrate in the upper layers of the atmosphere two months ago. The first satellite in the series, Helios 1A, went up in 1995 and is still operating. Also in the payload today was the Parasol satellite, which is to help study the effect of cloud cover and aerosols on global warming and the greenhouse effect, believed to occur when carbon dioxide emissions trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere. Parasol is part of a French-American space observation mission involving six satellites that can study the world's atmosphere and help give a complete idea of how human activity affects the environment. The launch marks the 165th Ariane mission since the European launcher first began operating in 1979. Arianespace is the commercial arm of the 13-country European Space Agency. Arianespace plans next month to launch a souped-up version of Ariane-5 that is capable of carrying a 10-tonne payload - about 3 tonnes more than the previous version. The new version has been grounded since the failure of a launch attempt two years ago, when it veered off course and was destroyed by ground control - leading to the loss of two costly satellites. |
| Posted by:God Save The World |
| #9 They can take all the photos they want, but it takes an experienced, trained interpreter to convert that into useful information. The few French photo interpreters I've met are mediocre at best. The people in the Middle East can buy the raw data, but can they use it? I've seen the French "SPOT" imagery - it's pretty good stuff, about on the par with our Landsat photography. I don't have a lot of fear about people using this to target the US, however. A 700km sun-synchronous orbit means it passes over a given part of the earth at the same (local) time every day, usually around local noon. It's not hard to determine what part of the earth's surface it'll cover at a given time. Easy to spoof. Remember my comments from a few days ago - it's the capabilities that make it a good or a poor imaging platform. If it can only scan within a few dozen degrees of NADIR, it has a limited capability. Without an all-weather capability, or a wide range, it's still capable, but not necessarily dangerous. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-12-19 4:08:45 PM |
| #8 I'm more worried about it falling on my head. |
| Posted by: 2b 2004-12-19 2:37:57 PM |
| #7 They named the spy satellite the "al-Chirac" |
| Posted by: Capt America 2004-12-19 12:22:33 PM |
| #6 Riverdog- I would not be at all suprised to know that we have an ASAT, but I don't think it's the old Altair system you're referring to. Altair was based on the old AGM-69 SRAM, which was removed from service in the late 80s after it was determined the rocket motors were cracking badly. There may very well be a couple out there, but at the very least the motors are a couple of decades old, and I'm not sure how safe they would be. Best regards, Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-12-19 12:15:54 PM |
| #5 Gonna be fun to see how much Delta V this puppies got. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-19 11:39:22 AM |
| #4 Wasn't France one of the key contractors on the Euro-Mars lander? Whom are the French going to spy on? There many enemies are ??? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2004-12-19 9:13:18 AM |
| #3 That is a good point about the Frog's selling that data, its not like their military is capable of acting on anything the satellite turns up. Unless of course the info has something to do with unarmed black African civilians. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2004-12-19 8:17:18 AM |
| #2 Launching a Satellite is one thing, but what about repairs? What if a problem in the components is found? Guess who they will have crawl for to get it fixed? That's right, us. And we can just put in a command over-ride when that happens. France launching a Satellite isn't big news. |
| Posted by: Charles 2004-12-19 8:10:45 AM |
| #1 Hmmmm...this is not good news. The Frogs are apt to sell that data to the highest bidder, and Al-Q can probably bid on things, and if not, Iran, Syria, Egypt or any of the you-name-it Islamic regimes will be able to get that info on us and our mil ops in the region. 700km is well within the range of our ASAT missiles. It's about time we validated the system. Since the ASAT is/can be launched from an F-15, any place on earth we can fly an F-15 to is the apparent launch point of the missile, in case the Frogs have the capability to track the ASAT back to it's source, which I doubt. I can think of a few sports on the globe that would make good release points, taking the heat off us. |
| Posted by: Rivrdog 2004-12-19 2:37:22 AM |