Russia to reveal location of US military satellites in free space database | Hacker News Reader

Russia to reveal location of US military satellites in free space database

rt.com

42 pointsJerry213 comments

Most of them are already tracked by amateurs who determine and discuss their orbits on open mailing lists, so this data won't be a huge revelation.

What will be more useful is a source of derived orbital elements for non-classified satellites; NORAD provide sets of data but about ten years ago added a licensing restriction that forbids redistribution of that data or calculations based thereon. A second source without that nonsense would be very useful.

https://www.space-track.org/documentation#/user_agree

For part of my master's thesis, I made a real-time visualization using some of the TLE data you mention from an amateur who compiles it. Should geolocate you and show which ones you have a line of site to you at the moment.(Sorry it's not mobile friendly.)https://explorejs.space/demos/cSats/

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Great! Thanks very much.

Yet another example of the dubious benefits of secrecy: the Russians know all about these satellites, from launch time on. Meanwhile civilian work is made more complex and dangerous so the MIC can keep the information away from their true enemies: the taxpaying public.

Russians aren't the only one who are targeted by geospatial surveillance, and some countries and organizations that are don't have the same intelligence and space monitoring capabilities that the Russian have.

I don't see how this makes civilian work any more complex or dangerous since all space launches in the world are cleared through UNOOSA this isn't like SpaceX nor anyone is going to run into a US KH super platform on the way up.

So while it is true that you can't keep your spy satellites a secret (for long at least) from nation state like Russia, smaller countries and various non-state actors that are the targets of surveillance can be kept in the dark, the GRU doesn't brief north Korea or ISIS.

This is a dick waving contest between the US and Russia a kin to the cold war, but claiming that this information is held because the public are the enemies of the state is ridiculous. While the location of space based intelligence collection platforms does intrigue me I don't see any more justification for it to be public than to have every surveillance drone and military aircraft appear on flightradar24.com.

Can we imagine a scenario by which some entity that USA might wish to observe, and which might want to avoid said observance, might be capable of using this information to do so, but wouldn't be capable of obtaining this information in the first place without the actions described in TFA?

I can't. First of all, there are numerous satellites parked over the relevant portions of the Middle East. That was true before ISIS began, and ISIS has never been unaware of that fact. Second, if some group operating in e.g. Indonesia wanted to make sure they weren't observed in some particular operation, there's no plausible way for them to go from this spreadsheet to a schedule for their operation. Maybe they could hire a black hat astronautical engineer?

I'm not an astronautical engineer, but presumably the USA MIC hasn't given some UN agency the secret formula? So, every time a civilian orbital maneuver is planned there is some sort of multi-party telephone-game protocol? Eliminating that would seem to result in less complexity and more safety.

There are countries and entities that do take precaution against EOS but do not have up to date information on all platforms, if you want to take the middle east for example then tactical intelligence from time sharing on EROS-B for example which is a civilian EOS which several governments around the world use also for intelligence gathering purposes is considerably poorer than using platforms with less predictable position when targeting local nation states and non-state actors.

As far as safety goes the UN coordinates with all the government and non-government bodies around the world regarding space matters, the process is complex but like anything to do with space it's complex for the right reasons it needs to be thorough and methodical even if there was a database of all US non-civilian platforms online no one in their right mind would use it to base orbital maneuvers that would be considerably less safe than the process we have now unless you want to bet your multi-million dollar platform on how accurate or up-to date that information is.

Everything regarding space is planned months if not years up front, and every time it's verified and validated by coordinating with multiple national and international agencies, when it comes to space one thing you don't do is "save time".

> While the catalog does not disclose data on America’s own military or dual-use satellites (...), it does feature Russia’s defense satellites.

So the Russian satellites are on the US list, and the US satellites are on the Russian list. Fun!

The article talks about using telescopes, which is odd. NORAD uses a radar system designed to provide early warning of Russian ICBMs to track satellites. I assumed Russia would use a similar system.

Used to, I think. If you're talking about NAVSPASUR, it was shut down in 2013. The replacement is not yet running.

Well, radar will get you a location, but lacks detail. Russia's Krona system[1] apparently uses radar to find the satellites, then illuminates them with a laser so that optical telescopes can get imagery and precise measurements.

[1]http://geimint.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/soviet-russian-space-...

Isn't there already several other open databases available?

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