UK launches its first Earth-imaging military satellite | Hacker News Reader

UK launches its first Earth-imaging military satellite

theguardian.com

"It's designed to capture 5km-wide spot scenes on the ground and have a best resolution of 90cm."[1]

Some sample ~90cm-ish imagery from Airbus Vision-1 (20km swath 87cm resolution) is available at [2].

It looks like it'd be used for knowing when a warship is in port (but perhaps having to guess which one), or when a warship under construction has been floated, or when a large military construction project has started or completed, or when ground for a new military forward operating base has been cleared, etc. Then more expensive higher resolution imagery could be ordered if it were worthwhile to do so.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1d77yq9zz2o

[2] https://intelligence.airbus.com/newsroom/satellite-image-gal...

Do we have good reasons to suppose this isn't a lie?

Absent that, I would expect the 2-3x on what's made public.

The vendor tells us that Tyche is supposedly derived from their existing carbonite satellites.

The carbonite product page broadly lines up with the claimed specs (~5km swath, ~1m resolution). At the claimed orbit (500km), a ~0.5m aperture (see "washing machine sized") is diffraction limited at about 0.7m, so there doesn't appear to be too too much wiggle room.

Side note - carbonite doesn't just do imagery - it does video too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf_zd9MvW44).

https://www.sstl.co.uk/space-portfolio/missions-in-build/202...

https://www.sstl.co.uk/getmedia/b38389d7-cb07-4308-944a-a916...

The effective resolution is limited by the atmosphere as far as I understand. Eddies etc.

Also this satellite was very cheap at 22 million, the US cutting edge ones are rumoured to cost over a billion (and they're much bigger than washing machine size). So I wouldn't expect it to be a lot better than what's commercially available.

Why would you think it is a lie? Planet Labs' SkySat satellites have been flying for a decade and have 30cm resolution. The UK ones are based on existing Carbonite satellite that do 90cm.

If anything, having only 90cm when could be better is the odd thing.

> If anything, having only 90cm when could be better is the odd thing.

Seems you found the answer to your own question: it would be odd for it to be not better.

The other reason why it might be a lie is because the exact specs of spy gear is often kept secret. It is very hard to disguise the fact that you have launched a satelite, but comparatively easy to keep it secret what exactly is on it.

With peacetime military and government procurement cycles what would be odd would be that it was close to current best in class, not other way around.

Anybody remember what the estimated resolution was on those undoctored satellite images Trump leaked a few years ago?

90cm resolution is more than enough to identify a ship. There arent manu military ships in this world. All appear in public regularly . 90cm is enough to get overall hull dimensions and thereby separate a ship from its neighbours in port. They dont need to be read license plates. Ships are very big.

90cm would maybe be more susceptible to decoys (like the WWII inflatable tanks but with ships?)

Decoys are harder to fake, for instance an inflatable tank doesn't emit much infrared compared to a real tank. This was not an issue for camera that only capture visible light such as what was available in WWII or the naked eye.

Plus the ship can't appear suddenly in the middle of the ocean. And where do you hide the original ship?

Well... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNLMS_Abraham_Crijnssen_(193...

But my point is that when you have a satellite tracking a slow moving ship every 3-4 hours, it's impossible to hide it.

It's easier in space because of no air resistance, but stuff like mylar balloon/sheath decoys I think beats out basically all missile defense. Aside from the infrared stuff, inflatable ships not in port wouldn't leave an actual wake of the right size etc. and might not be viable.

from: https://www.inflatechdecoy.com/features/

" 01_OPTICAL SIGNATURE - LIFE SIZE, PERFECT SHAPE AND LIGHTWEIGHT

02_RADAR SIGNATURE - ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS UNPACK THE DECOY AND TURN ON THE ENGINE. 90 SECONDS LATER THE DECOY GENERATES YOUR DESIRED RCS.

03_INFRARED SIGNATURE - INFLATECH DECOYS CONTAIN INTEGRATED THERMAL SIGNATURE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. WE GUARANTEE 100% MULTISPECTRAL COPY OF THE DESIRED SIGNATURE."

> This was not an issue for camera that only capture visible light such as what was available in WWII

It wasn't as common as today but we already had IR aerial photography in the 40s

Yes to 90cm being used for identifying the class of a ship. But probably no for 90cm being used for identifying a particular hull, which may only be determinable with higher resolution imagery to confirm a hull-specific feature such as an upgraded radar or gun.

Somewhat ironically, the BBC article illustrates the "similar capability" with a picture taken by a commercial British satellite launched in 2018 and built by the same private British company.

So there is nothing ground breaking there in term of capability. The point is just that this is apparently the first reconnaissance satellite owned by the MoD, which probably means much faster reaction times and more independence.

Interesting factoid:

"One interesting feature is its propulsion system which manoeuvres the satellite using water. The water goes through a thruster that heats it up to make superheated steam. That's how we get thrust and do station-keeping," explained chief technology officer Andrew Haslehurst." [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d77yq9zz2o

I wonder what delta-v they get and what the expected lifetime of the satellite is.

The press release (as well as product sheet of the Carbonite line that this is based on) say 5-7 years.

Resistor jet thrust and specific impulse is heavily influenced by how much electric power you supply.

We don't know what performance specs for this satellite is, but we can estimate using modules from this other company as a stand in - their PBR-50 seems to be about the right size for Tyche (100-200kg class). https://pale-blue.co.jp/product/pbr-50/ and it claims 70s of specific impulse. Using the 160kg mass from the BBC article and 10kg of water as propellant, you'd get a delta-v of about 45.

Thank you!

(And I clearly should have read more carefully)

> The washing machine-sized satellite, was designed and built in the UK under a £22m contract awarded to Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and is the first to be fully owned by the MoD.

Win for the UK satellite industry here. Also a win for NATO capability that can operate independently of the US if needed.

I dunno much bout satellites but 22m for a new satellite developed from scratch seem pretty cheap

Yes the US ones are supposedly over 1 billion each.

Vastly different kinds of satellites. The KH-11 satellites weigh 17,000 kg, these weight 150kg. KH-11 has 2.4m mirror and resolution of 6cm. The UK ones are resolution of 90cm.

Both kinds are useful, cause the UK ones are small and cheap and good for general surveillance. While the big ones are useful for detail. My feeling is that the US should launch some small ones, but I think they buy that from Planet Labs and others.

I know, my point was that this can't really be anything else than a commercial off the shelf model with minor modifications. Still useful but I wouldn't expect magical resolutions from it.

People expect a lot these days because Google maps "satellite view" but the highest zoom levels are generally aerial.

What exactly is NATO without the US?

Funding reference: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/14636.jpeg

>What exactly is NATO without the US?

For starters, it's still a lot bigger than Ukraine. Ukraine have successfully resisted Russian invasion for a couple of years, initially without the modern Western weaponry they now have (limited) access to. And they've recently pulled a switcharoo and actually invaded Russia a bit.

Even if the US decided to pull out of NATO, should Russia invade a NATO country then Russia is getting bounced out on its collective ear.

Would the US leaving vastly weaken NATO? For sure.

But is NATO still fit for purpose without the US for the remaining states? Yes.

A worse scenario would be if the US and its contractors pulled out of everything, like the F-series plane agreements, the shared nuclear arsenal with the UK, Five Eyes etc. That would be catastrophic. But those left behind would still have enough to defend itself against Russia.

A much smaller but still consequential military alliance.

The title is misleading. SpaceX launched it. The title had me wondering when the UK had suddenly developed a launcher.

We have one recently completed in the Shetland Islands, the SaxaVord Spaceport [0], which has been given approval to do up to 30 launches a year. The UK spaceport guide [2] has more details and a few more planned launch sites.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-she... [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/643e6a4222ef3...

That isn't a launcher, just a launchpad.

From the spaceport guide- Orbex Prime is a microlauncher planned for flight next year with a 180kg payload capacity, this satelite was 150kg.

https://orbex.space/launch-vehicle

Virgin Orbit has unsuccessfully tried to launch satellites from the UK [1], so I thought it might have been that, but it turns out they went out of business a couple of months later [2].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64218883

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit

> The first signals from Tyche were received a few hours after lift-off on Friday night, confirming the successful launch from Vandenberg space force base, in California, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter-11 mission.

And this particular launch carried 116 satellites: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cvg495lr8pjo

This is what it looks like:

https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4D22AQGbFrotEJ8sDA/fee...

Tyche is the cube on the bottom left, facing away from the camera.

The odd-looking satellite on the top right is blurred, I wonder what it is.

In jest, the orange tank like thing attached to that satellite looks sorta like a stargate ZPM haha.

Some folks at the NASA space flight forum have it pegged as Acadia-5.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=58043.msg2...

Acadia-5 is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) earth observation satellite operated by Capella Space. The orange bundle would be the radar antenna all folded up (see render in link below).

https://www.exolaunch.com/news_95.html

Thank you, that makes sense.

SSTL do amazingly good value space work.

> It's designed to capture 5km-wide spot scenes on the ground and have a best resolution of 90cm.

Does somebody here know the military logic behind making these specifications public? I would imagine you don't want your opponents to know how much you know?

Nothing outstanding with this spec (can buy the same from commercial satellite imaging companies). So either they thought it did not harm to publicise or the actual capability is better than they tell us.

They can say whatever they want to my friend. It doesn’t mean it’s the real spec.

Public money paid for it and they have a right to know it does at least something useful. Also it 90% can do a lot more than that. It will probably have a higher resolution optic.

Because it’s probably not the real number. The reason why they wanted to release at least _some_ specs is probably because congress / parliament

There's no harm in making it public because the technical capabilities itself are outdated. As stated in the article, the news is that it's owned by the UK Ministry of Defense.

It's not a particularly advanced capability, and as far as the opponents are concerned, the UK can request imagery from its allies, some of whom do possess imaging satellites capable enough that their exact specifications are a secret.

A couple of related video essays

This Satellite does not exist: The Story of Zircon(lazerpig)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CKnFqeXkg

Black Arrow. And why Britain doesn't have a space program(alexander the ok)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0FLy2nI13E

It sounds like extremely late to the game, we are talking about 1960s tech.

Very surprising for a country as large as the UK, I can only assume they used US satellites up until now, and started designing their own due to Trump

As a Brit, I reckon Brexit, and the restricted access to ESA [0], are the far more reasonable explanations here...

[0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/uk-involvement-in-the-eu-space-p...

which one of these programs constitute of a military reconnaissance satellite?

None that I'm aware off.

so I assume Britain received its imaging intelligence from the US as part of five eyes. or else I cannot explain how a nuclear armed country has skipped over one of the main prerequisite for missile targeting for 60 years

The UK nuclear arsenal has always been a strategic deterrent. The weapons in the UK arsenal (trident missiles with MIRV warheads) are designed to destroy cities, so unless the Russians have managed to conceal the locations of their major cities, targeting shouldn’t be an issue.

Presumably part of the nuclear doctrine is to take out your enemies nuclear launch sites before they launch

Also, even large cities have places which are better to target

>Presumably part of the nuclear doctrine is to take out your enemies nuclear launch sites before they launch

It is not. The UK, like most nuclear armed states, has a "No first use" doctrine, meaning its nukes exist only to retaliate, to turn cities to ash.

Whoever is nuking you, to the point that you use those retaliatory nukes, might be targeting your weapons, but they are on submarines in friendly waters, so not likely to be destroyed before they can launch.

Your link says:

"The UK’s membership of the European Space Agency (ESA) is not affected by leaving the EU as ESA is not an EU organisation."

I think you meant the EU Space programme, but that does not seem related to military imaging satellites.

Ah, another excellent benefit.

The British have had military satellites since Skynet 1A in 1969 [0], although these historically supported comms rather than ISR.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellite)

yes which only makes sense they were used to support five eyes sigint and used US satellites for visint

Didn't 1960s-era spy satellites use physical rolls of film that were dropped back to Earth and caught by planes or helicopters?

Yep! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)

Yeah it was pretty insane, catching it mid flight. Really cool. You can't make that stuff up.

Imagine tracking and catching something falling from space using only 60s tracking tech. No GPS. Wow.

There's no way GPS is more useful than a radio signal from the package.

No but the latter only works if you're already in proximity. With the speed these things come down you have to be already in the right vicinity to catch it.

This is where GPS+track prediction could help a lot. And why I think it's so impressive.

I was 15 years old in 2004 when I have guessed the existence of that program :)

I was reading a scientific magazine article about the planed return of the Genesis spacecraft’s samples. They were writing about how the probe will float back to Earth under a parachute and a helicopter will catch it mid—air. That plan sounded absolutely bonkers crazy to me and I would have assumed they needed a long process of trial drops to practice this stunt, but the documented evidence shown that they were quite non-chalant about it. Almost as if they have done such things previously. But since there were no public evidence of prior art I assumed some classified spy stuff was what gave them the experience needed to be confident about the skill. (This was 7 years before the declassification of the existence of the KH-9 program)

Elementary, My Dear Watson!

(yes, I know it's not a real quote)

You should see how often I was wrong about stuff though! :D

I only wrote about this because later it become clear that I was right.

I would never tell you about how much time I spent thinking about how a submarine could use laser back-scatter to track the slightly warmer wake of an enemy submarine. :P Not until they declassify that too.

Probably a combination of Trump and Brexit. The Tory governments made a big song and dance of investing to replace the access to European space programs that they lost, I wouldn't be surprised if this project sat in the folds of one of those efforts - even just financially.

On the other hand - this was actually delivered, so maybe not a Tory thing at all... /S

I may well be utterly wrong, but this seems a bit Maginot Line.

Single large satellites are I think going to be sitting ducks for anti-satellite missiles. Be destroyed first five minutes of a war.

What you need is something like Starlink - bazillions of tiny satellites.

Reminds me of this map of Starlink satellites covering the globe.

https://www.starlinkmap.org/

I was in Grand Teton national Park last week and was looking at the sky to view the Perseids meteor shower, and I just saw chains of these Starlink satellites constantly moving across the sky. They look like tiny little stars, moving smoothly in an equally spaced out line.

Also turns out they destroy the ozone layer. Great. That problem again.

Surveillance is just as important. In the months and years before a war begins, you need preparation and deterrence.

And as a NATO member and nuclear weapon state, UK's wars are not likely to escalate to satellite shooting. I mean, if it does escalate to that point it's going to be with Russia or China and there'll be bigger problems to worry about than losing a satellite.

I would put it to you that with bigger problems to worry about, you'd really rather not have other problems to worry about as well, such as the complete loss of space-borne surveillance capability, which likely would prove very useful with regard to the bigger problems.

The UK gov is a shareholder in the oneweb satellite constellation.

I can't with a quick search find any info on the OneWeb satellites, but they're internet access, right? not equipped with high-resolution telescopes.

no - high resolution target-able telescopes on taskable satellites don't go on low cost microsats.

Bit of a story here, given in the 'pedia page.

Brits had a launch, 36 satellites, ready to go from Russia, days before the invasion.

Putin's Russia says (having just invaded Ukraine!) : we will only launch if guarantee not to use satellites for military purposes, and UK Gov divests shares (it was the large majority shareholder).

UK Gov oddly enough says no. Russia refuses to launch.

Russia then also refuses to return satellites, and they were in the end written off.

Like dealing with stroppy children with guns.

I wonder what the implications would have been if the UK had just said "of course not" to the question of using them for miltary

Would Russia ever know or not on the usage?

The perceived enemy isn't without but within.

How many years until we have high enery lasers shot on people's heads?

It's already just about possible on paper, but directed energy weapons are poorly characterised even on the ground so nobody's going to be in a hurry to mount them on a very expensive easily identifiable platform that covers a very narrow ground path on a very predictable schedule while being extremely vulnerable to counterattack.

Kinda the same reason we could have RFGs but don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MVs37rxJL0

What's even the point of such an awful one?

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