NovaSAR: UK radar satellite to track illegal shipping activity | Hacker News Reader

NovaSAR: UK radar satellite to track illegal shipping activity

bbc.com

If you are interested in more details than BBC's article has:

- some more detailed specs: https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missio...

- launch report & video: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/09/16/pslv-c42-mission-statu...

I wonder what the 'refresh-rate' is of a scan, as in how many times a second/minute/hour is the image refreshed. I doubt such a wide area could be real-time. Guessing it's enough that it's possible to track and locate rogue ships.

https://www.sandia.gov/radar/video/index.html

These videos are pretty old, IIRC.

It looks like a 580 km polar orbit, so any given point on the Earth will only be scanned twice in a day - once at night and once in the day.

https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/104137237292473958...

For once, news about the UK Government tracking things that DOESN'T look like 1984.

What's the problem with "illegal shipping" anyway? Surely it's not worth launching a satellite just to stop the odd customs-evader?

What is this really for?

To establish precedent for the UK policing the worlds oceans - a goal its had on its roster for centuries now.

Well, they did use it to stop slavery...

.. and as well, exercise an iron grip over the third worlds' economy ..

Illegal fishing is a big contender and is one avenue I think is sorely needed in this world of horrific natural/resource depletion and by-catch waste, despite what certain punters with an axe to grind (eg @mmjaa, below) may believe.

Illegal shipping is a small problem (~$100M?)

Illegal fishing is not - $10 - $23B annually in cost (2009)[1], destroys fish stocks, and contributes to slavery and human trafficking.[2]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2646833/

[2] https://fas.org/irp/nic/fishing.pdf

I would imagine the illegal shipping activity they are mainly targeting is the bypassing of sanctions. For example oil being transferred between tankers on the high seas and then shipped into North Korea.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-russi...

Many of you may remember past radar ocean surveillance satellites, perhaps most notably the Soviet US-A series of RORSATs:

http://www.astronautix.com/u/us-a.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A

FWIW Iridium already does the same thing on a global scale. Includes AIS and ADS-B tracking (tho both can be switched off easily).

That’s not really the same thing at all - listening for a deliberate transmission from a ship announcing its location is easy, required only an antenna, and can be done from a cubesat.

This is an active radar in space.

Why is it that basically every story coming out of the UK makes Orwell look more and more like a prophet?

Maritime law enforcement is a rather traditional role of the Royal Navy and hardly Orwellian. The radar-based satellite is arguably less worrying than the traditional US military spy satellites.

I don't remember voting for the UK to police my countries sovereign waters.

Fact is, the UK has no real place in the world if it isn't policing things such as the worlds oceans, or its finances. This is a role it has granted itself, un-democratically - one may even say, Imperiously...

What's your proposed alternative?

Natural resources and the environment don't respect borders. All countries should be watching what others do to shared natural resources.

>Imperiously

We've even built a death star! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12169051/Massive-Dea...

No, really,

For once, this is about tracking down illegal operations that would otherwise destroy this planet's most precious resource.

Please, take a look at this http://globalfishingwatch.org/ to get a grasp about what's at stake.

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