Who Would Kidnap a Space Telescope? | Hacker News Reader

Who Would Kidnap a Space Telescope?

theatlantic.com

62 pointslanna23 comments

The CIA would!

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/28/1016867/lunik-ci... ("Lunik: Inside the CIA’s audacious plot to steal a Soviet satellite")

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/lunik-loan-space-... ("Lunik on Loan: A Space Age Spy Story")

It's pretty funny actually, history is - it turns out - often more incredible than what you would consider a really bad plot point ("naaaaah c'mon that could never happen!"). And many organisms on Earth exceed even really poor middle-grade-school-level-b-movies.

As a favorite example, the cordyceps fungus which infect the host and affect the behavior of the host to more easily spread the fungus (eg climb higher before dying). Immortalized via BBC Planet Earth, and PE inspiring the game The Last of Us (filming as a series for HBO).

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

Well, kidnap as it travels over international waters, so, well, that's not exciting, the title can just be "Who Would Kidnap Precious Cargo?" (answer: sea pirates).

I thought it'd be about a telescope already in space, and how some entity managed to send signals to it to move it (from the HTML title as it currently is on my browser: The World's Most Powerful Space Telescope Is Moving). I was wondering what they'd do with it and how they'd hide it. And also why.

Thinking about it, obviously radio comms to (and probably from) the satellite is encryped, I wonder if the Bad Guys could hack into the ground station and steal the encryption key...

Same, but I'm curious why you think it's encrypted at all? Also makes me curious how resistant to crypto attacks satellites would be, given all the various failings and gotchas with terrestrial tech and tls and others.

I'm curious why you think they'd just leave open the ability to destroy a satellite to anyone with a powerful enough transmitter. The telemetry, tracking and control (TT&C) data is absolutely encrypted for any serious satellite operating today.

You need authentication, not encryption for that. And yes, every satellite's TTM has an AU (authentication unit) nowadays.

I don't think there is any need to encrypt traffic coming from the telescope. One of the (many) compromises in the design is using 26Ghz radios that will be so low power that the only way to downlink data is using the huge Deep Space Network.

So many design compromises were forced by not putting nuclear power on the telescope. I really hope it works, but I think the odds of getting much useful science from it slim.

I share your hopes, but I fear the second system effect.

Why not include nuclear power on the telescope?

Would it cause interference?

Almost certainly, yes, it would interfer with the thermal imaging of the scope.

Not my domain, so speculating:

Space-based nuclear power is virtually always a radioisotopic thermoelectric generator (RTG), which works by utilising the heat of radioactive decay from plutonium, in the form of plutonium oxide.

Since the generation mechanism is thermal, the RTG reaches high temperatures (500C, 900F).

The Webb telescope is an infrared telescope, sensing electromatic radiation in the range emitted by warm objects. The telescope itself is cryogenically cooled to 50K (-223C, -369F), and carefully shielded from the Sun by a large (though lightweight and delicate) shade.

Even electrically-powered systems on the cold side of the telescope are designed for the lowest possible power consumption to minimise heating. The instrument package draws 11 milliwatts of power. That's 1 calorie every 6 minutes 20 seconds --- it would take 6.33 minutes to raise 1 ml of water 1 degree Celsius. You burn about 10 calories (10 kilocalories or "dietary calories") in the same time.

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

TL;DR: thermal generation on an instrument which must be maintained at an extremely cold temperature is a hard engineering problem.

> I thought it'd be about a telescope already in space,

(answer: space pirates)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Only_Live_Twice_(film)

> Webb, with a mirror as tall as a two-story building and a protective shield the size of a tennis court

What kind of launch vehicle are they going to be using for that?

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/launch.html

The Ariane 5, launching out of French Guiana.

The sunshield will be folded on launch, and will unfurl once it reaches L2.

Here's a pretty good video that goes through the entire deployment process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ihVeEoUdo

Is there an orbital trajectory or launch-facility-resources reason to be launching out of FG, or is it political?

Seems like the easiest way to avoid sea pirates would be to launch the Webb from its current country of residence.

ESA launches out of FG. The reasons are its equatorial location, which makes it suitable (lower energy requirements) for geosynchronous orbits and, like Florida for NASA, the ocean to the east which reduces the downrange risks.

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

Hopefully no integer overflow on this launch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp_D8r-2hwk

https://hownot2code.com/2016/09/02/a-space-error-370-million...

Anyone want that other side of a bet that the Webb telescope will not be doing any science in 2022? Even if it launches, it will be a miracle if it works. They are using so many brand new technologies on a spacecraft operating 3X farther away than the moon.

Do KHs count?

USA has a navy, just send small destroyer for protection...

US navy started against pirates in 1820...

(Pushes up glasses) the US Navy was officially created by Congress in 1794 [1] to fight the Barbary Pirates of Northern Africa [2].

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Act_of_1794

2- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars

Honestly, that should work. The first rule of piracy is "Don't do anything that costs more than you could get."

A Naval escort makes an attack very expensive.

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