24 February 2007

In this second installment in a series of articles about Military uses of space, this article talks about threats to space based systems from damage done by rival nations on Earth.

National Space policies, while giving importance to international co-operation, increasingly stress the need to protect satellites from hostile acts. The US is considered to be the most dependent on space. Concerns arising from this dependency are reflected in a recently published US national space policy. Highlighting the fact that the United States are highly dependent and protective of their space systems. The reports states that the US will develop capabilities for space control and to deny its adversaries access to space if necessary. Some say that concerns over hostile acts are inflated and statements such as the 2001 Rumsfield Commission report, about a future "space Pearl Harbor", create tension which can hinder the otherwise smooth resolution of disputes.

Today, the main threats to destructions of satellites are ground based ballistic kinetic weapons and collision with another space object. Ground-based jamming of these satellites are also used today. Hacking into these satellite's ground systems interface is also used, this ground systems is more vulnerable to attacks than the others.

Recently, the use of kinetic ballistic missiles has been trust into the limelight with the recent 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test. The logic of these kind of weapons are fairly simple. A high propulsion device being fired from the ground into space only needs to gather enough kinetic energy to knock and hit a satellite to ensure its destruction, however, having a missile that can reach that kind of altitude is rather hard to get. A standard space satellite sits and orbits the Earth at around 400km above sea level. This weapons are classified under and known as kinetic kill vehicles in space technology jargon.

Jamming involves interrupting communications between the satellites and their ground stations by drowning out their signal with a more powerful one. The idea is similar to the jamming of radio waves. Targeting ground stations can be done by destroying the computer component which runs the satellite's systems and applications.

There are also several unorthodox methods of destroying space based satellites.

    * Low powered lasers can disrupt satellite sensors. According to a report, about 30 countries has the capability to do this, although the figure is hard to verify and confirm.
    * Nuclear weapons explosion in space. In 1962, the US High Altitude Nuclear Detonation resulted in extremely high radiation levels, destroying about 7 satellites within a few months. Placing weapons of mass destruction in space has since been banned by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

These satellite destruction techniques and methods are often shunned by the World community. However, regarding the 2007 Chinese anti satellite missile test, China did not contravene any law or treaty in the world about bringing their own satellite down with a kinetic kill vehicle.

*This article is not a credible source in space technologies. The author is not viable for this source used as a credible piece of information.