Satellite will have to be turned off when it floats over the US | Hacker News Reader

Satellite will have to be turned off when it floats over the US

thecooldown.com

19 pointshoward94115 comments

> "“The primary frequency allocation in P band is for huge SOTR [single-object-tracking radars] Americans use to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. That was, of course, a problem for us,” Scipal says. To get an exemption from the ban on space-based P-band radars, ESA had to agree to several limitations, the most painful of which was turning the Biomass radar off over North America and Europe to avoid interfering with SOTR coverage."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/18/1115388/esa-airb...

I guess that's referring to things such as these?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAVE_PAWS ("...The radar operates in the UHF band between 420 - 450 MHz...")

It's embarrassing that a satellite designed by the ESA can't be used over Europe.

I've read other information about ICBM-detecting satellites being triggered by the sun glinting off lakes having the same signature as an ICBM launch.

Surely the orbit of this satellite will be well known and so false positives alarms can be ruled out?

I suppose it's possible that a bad actor could time a real ICBM launch to coincide with this satellite's orbit to defeat Early Warning Systems, but then again they could just launch submarine-based ICBMs from the southern equator.

> Surely the orbit of this satellite will be well known and so false positives alarms can be ruled out?

It's not the physical presence of the satellite over the US that messes up (or could) ICBM detection, it's the operation of the satellite's radar system. That's why they have to turn off the radar when it's over the US and Europe.

Exactly. It's like shining your headlights onto a bunch of people looking at the nighttime sky for constellations.

Why does the title only mention the US? It can’t do it over Europe either.

Ragebait. Initially I thought it was something Trump did that resulted in this, and I'd assume others may as well.

Maybe my non-native English is showing but I’m having difficulty reading the article. First, it describes how the satellite can’t be used over the US and Europe and then says:

> Still, this isn't the worst setback. [… stuff how the satellite will be used over southern America …]

I was waiting for the description of an even worse setback, which makes the satellite even more limited, but it seems like „this isn’t the worst setback“ was supposed to mean „it’s not too bad, we can still do other useful stuff“. Was that understandable for native speakers?

Yes it's a little awkward. I think they mean South America is still ok -- so they can collect data there -- but not North America.

It's not just you. It feels like there's a missing sentence or paragraph somewhere connecting the two. Maybe there's a compounding effect making the impact of turning the satellite off worse?

This is one of the annoying constructions in English that has two common meanings which are the opposite of each other. It can either be referring to the worst possible/conceivable setback (as here) or to the worst encountered setback-- you have to use other clues like overall tone and the surrounding context to figure out which was meant.

Yeah, yeah.

You wrote:

> I was waiting …

I think your instinct and expectation were correct. The article reads:

> The info provided by Biomass will be a critical step forward.

I think it should read "The info provided by Biomass would be a critical step forward." ("Would" should be used because it's discussing a hypothetical situation contrary to fact — contrary to fact because the restrictions impede the collection of the desired data.)

My guess is that it's either sloppy editing or LLM-generated text.

It can be read in two ways.

The most natural way is as you have read it.

However, it is also valid in the sense of "this is a setback, but it's not all that bad". (You might write, "Still, this isn't the worst setback ever.")

You would need to read enough to realize by later lack of a description of the worst setback to realize the former, most natural way, is not in use.

Interesting, I never noticed the ambiguity until you pointed it out.

It's like the awful phrase 'I could care less' I suppose.

A better title would be "Recon satellite jammer launched by ESA".

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