Launching cubesats from the X-37B OTV 5: lifetime modelling with GMAT

image: USAF

Last week, CSpOC issued catalogue entries for three cubesats released as part of the X-37B mission OTV 5.

It concerns USA 295 (2017-052C), USA 296 (2017-052D) and USA 297 (2017-052E). No orbital data are given, but the catalogue entry did explicitly indicate that all three are no longer on orbit.

That cubesats were released as part of this X-37B mission had been clear from a US Air Force statement made after completion of the OTV 5 mission in October last year. The wording of that statement is however ambiguous: while most analysts take it to mean the cubesats were released by OTV 5, it is also possible that they were released as ride shares by the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched OTV 5 in 2017.

In this blog post, I will do an academic exercise aimed at guessing when, at the latest, these cubesats could have been released by OTV 5, assuming release from the latter.

OTV 5, the 5th X-37B mission, was launched from Cape Canaveral on 7 September 2017. It landed at the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility on 27 October 2019, after 780 days in space. Unlike previous missions that were all launched in 38-43 degree inclined orbits, this one was launched into a 54.5 degree inclined orbit. Combined with the fall launch date, this meant it took our tracking network a while to locate it on-orbit: the first positive observations were made in April 2018, half a year after launch.

From April 2018, when we started to track it, to October 2019, when it landed, OTV 5 orbitted at various orbital altitudes between 300 and 390 km altitude (see diagram below):

click diagram to enlarge

The CSpOC catalogue entry lists all three cubesats that were released as part of this mission as "no longer on orbit". Assuming they ended their orbital life by natural decay (rather than, for example, being retrieved by OTV 5 again at a later stage, which is in theory certainly possible!), the fact that they were no longer on orbit by 11 February 2020 might yield some constraints on when they could have been released.

To get some idea of the orbital lifetime of a cubesat released from OTV 5, and spurred on to do so by Jonathan McDowell, I ran several GMAT models in which I modelled a 5 kg 3U cubesat released at three altitudes: 400 km, 360 km and 325 km.

We do not know the actual orbital altitude of OTV 5 at that  moment. Nor do we know when the cubesats were released. Hence the three altitude variants. The start point of the modelling was an assumed release into the OTV 5 orbit on October 7, 2017, one month after launch of OTV 5.

For each cubesat, the models were run in two variants: one with the cubesat in minimal drag orientation (0.01 m² cross section), and one with the cubesat in maximal drag orientation (0.03 m² cross section). I used the MSISE90 atmosphere in the model, with historic Space Weather data for October 2017 to February 2020 and estimated solar and geomagnetic activity parameters from the 'early cycle' variant of the GMAT Schattenfile for dates past early 2020.

For the three assumed orbital altitudes and an assumed release one month after OTV 5 launch, the GMAT data produce the orbital decay plots below. In these plots, the red data are for minimal drag orientation, the blue data for maximal drag orientation. If the cubesats in question were similar to NRO's Colony II cubesats, then the red minimum drag orientation curves probably represent the orbital evolution best. If they were more like Colony I cubesats, then the blue maximal drag curves are more representative.

Taking the minimal drag variants, and under the assumption that the cubesats were 3U cubesats and not retrieved on-orbit by OTV 5 at a later stage, the suggestion is a release below 350 km. Released at higher altitudes, they would still be on-orbit.

Assuming reentry before 11 February 2020 after natural orbital decay, a minimal drag orientation and release no lower and no higher than 325 km, the latest possible moment of release would be late August 2018, give or take a month to account for the uncertainties.

It appears we can rule this out however, because we know that OTV 5 was orbiting at 380 km altitude, not 325 km altitude, at that time. So the best guess (although one under many assumptions) is a release some time before August 2018, i.e. within 1 year after the launch of OTV 5.

It is still possible that the cubesats were released at a later date, but next retrieved while still on-orbit by OTV 5. If the cubesats were smaller than a 3U cubesat, a later release than August 2018 is possible as well.

Finally, given the ambiguity in US Air Force Statements on the matter, it is also possible that the cubesats were released from the Falcon 9 upper stage on the day of launch.

For more about the X-37B, and especially the active myth-making that seems to be at play around this secretive space-plane, see my earlier post here.

OTV 5 rising in April 2018. Click image to enlarge

Iran's failed Zafar launch: where did it go?

Zafar-1 launch on 9 Feb 2020. image: IRNA

On 9 February 2020 at 15:48:15 UT, Iran tried to launch a new satellite, Zafar-1, on a  Simorgh (Safir-2) rocket. Video released by the Iranian government shows that lift-off was succesful, and so was first stage separation and second stage ignition around 15:50:00 UT, and fairing separation around 15:50:18 UT. The upper stage next however failed to reach the necessary speed to put the satellite into earth orbit.

The intended orbit according to Iranian sources was a 530 km altitude, 56-degree inclination orbit. Orbit insertion however failed because the Simorgh upper stage burnt out at a speed of 6.533 km/s, almost 1 km/s short of the necessary 7.4 km/s,  according to the Iranian minister of Communications and Information Technology, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi. The upper stage and satellite reached an apogee at 541 km altitude before making a long ballistic flight back to earth surface.

Zafar 1 on top of the Simorgh rocket at Semnan. Photo: IRNA

In order to get some idea where it's flight ended, I have modelled the failed launch in STK and GMAT.

The ascend to 541 km altitude was modelled in STK, with launch into the azimuth needed to reach a 56.0-degree orbital inclination (launch azimuth about 134.7 degrees - this was calculated with software I have written myself). I positioned apogee such as to correspond with an attempted orbit insertion about 10 minutes after launch (a typical value for launch into lower LEO). Burnout speed was put at 6.533 km/s, per Iranian sources.

The resulting State Vector was then used as input in GMAT to model the ballistic descend. I did this for two cases: for a 90 kg mass, ~0.25 m² cross-section object corresponding to the Zafar satellite; and for a 1000 kg mass, 4.5 m² cross-section object corresponding to the spent Simorgh upper stage. As I had no values for mass and size of the latter, I used values similar to a North Korean UNHA-3 upper stage. The MSISE90 atmosphere with current Space Weather was used in GMAT.

click map to enlarge

The result of this modelling is impact in the Indian Ocean some 25 minutes after launch and some 6400 km downrange from Semnan, at about 12 S, 88 E, for both the satellite and the Simorgh upper stage (see map above). These values should not be taken too strictly, given several uncertainties in the model input: they are ballpark figures.

As it turns out in this case, varying the mass and size have mostly minor effects on the impact position only (note: in an earlier modelling attempt posted on Twitter, the impact point came out closer to Iran, because in that initial model run I had been using a lower burnout speed).

California 30 January 12:30 UT: the "space debris" reentry that wasn't

On 30 January 2020 near 12:30 UT (10:30 pm PST), a bright, slow, spectacularly fragmenting fireball swooped over southern California. It was seen and reported by many in the San Diego-Los Angeles area. The video above was obtained by a dedicated fireball all-sky camera operated by Bob Lunsford. The fireball duration approached 20 seconds.

In the hours after the fireball, the American Meteor Society (AMS) initially suggested that this was a Space Debris reentry, i.e. the reentry of something artificial from earth orbit.

But it wasn't.

Immediately upon seeing the video, I had my doubts. Upon a further look at the video, those doubt grew. To me, the evidence pointed to a meteoritic fireball, a slow fragmenting fireball caused by a small chunk of asteroid entering our atmosphere.

A discussion ensued on Twitter, until NASA's Bill Cooke settled the issue with multistation camera triangulation data, which showed that this was an object from an Apollo/Jupiter Family comet type heliocentric orbit with a speed of 15.5 km/s. In other words: my doubts were legitimite. This was not a space debris reentry but indeed a chunk of asteroid or comet.

I've already set out my argumentation about my doubts on Twitter yesterday, but will reitterate them again below for the benefit of the readers of this blog.

My doubts started because while watching the video I felt that the fireball, while slow and of exceptionally long duration, was still a tad too fast in angular velocity in the sky, and too short in duration, for this to be space debris. In the video, it can be seen to move over a considerable part of the sky in just seconds time.

The image below shows two stills from the video 6 seconds apart in time. The fireball passes two stars, alpha Ceti and beta Orionis, that are 35 degrees apart in the sky, and it takes the fireball a time span of about 6 seconds to do this, yielding an apparent angular velocity in the sky of about 5-6 degrees per second. That is an angular velocity that is a factor two too fast for reentering space debris at this sky elevation, as I will show below.

stills from the fireball video, 6 seconds apart, with two stars indicated

Orbital speed of a satellite is determined by orbital altitude. Reentering space debris, at less than 100 km altitude, has a very well defined entry speed of 7.9 km/s. This gives a maximum angular speed in the sky of about 5 degrees/second would it pass right above you in the zenith (and only then): but gives a (much) slower speed (2-3 degrees/second) when the reentry is visible lower in the sky, such as in the fireball video.

To gain some insight in the angular velocity a reentering piece of space debris would have at the elevation of the California fireball, I created an artificial 70 x 110 km reentry orbit over southern California that would pass the same two stars as seen from San Diego.

The map below shows that simulated track, with the object (marked by the green rectangular box) at 70 km altitude and positioned 6 seconds after passing alpha Ceti (marked by the green circle):

Simulated reentry track. click to enlarge

The angular velocity in the sky for a reentering object at this sky elevation suggested by this simulation is barely half that of the fireball. During the 6 seconds it took the fireball to move over 35 degrees of sky passing alpha Ceti and beta Orionis, the simulated reentering object would have moved over only 15 degrees, i.e with an angular velocity of 2.5 degrees/second rather than the 5-6 degrees/second of the fireball.

So this suggested that the fireball was moving at a speed a factor two too high for space debris. This therefore pointed to a meteoritic fireball, not a space debris reentry.

There were other reasons to doubt a reentry too. There were no matching TIP messages on Space-Track, the web-portal of CSpOC, the US military satellite tracking network. A reentering object as bright as the fireball in the video would have to be a large piece of space debris: this bright is clearly not the "nuts and bolts" category but suggests a large object like a satellite or rocket stage. It is unlikely that CSpOC would have missed a reentry of this size.

To be certain I ran a decay prediction on the full CSpOC catalogue with SatEvo myself: no object popped up that was expected to reenter near this date either, based on fresh orbital elements.

The fragmentation in itself, one of the arguments in the AMS' initial but mistaken conclusion of a "space debris reentry", is not unique to space debris reentries. It is also a common occurence with slow, meteorite dropping asteroidal fireballs, especially when they enter on a grazing trajectory. Take the Peekskill meteorite fall from October 1992 for example:




Likewise, while a 20-second meteor is not everyday, it is not a duration that is impossible for a meteor. Such durations (and even longer ones) have been observed before. Such long durations are especially the case with meteors that enter in a grazing way, under a shallow angle.

At the same time, a 20 seconds duration would be unusually short for a satellite or rocket stage reentry. Such reentries are usually visible for minutes, not a few seconds or a few tens of seconds.

So, to summarize:

1) the angular velocity in the sky appeared to be too large for space debris;
2) the fireball duration would be unusually brief for space debris;
3) and there were no obvious reentry candidates.

On the other hand:

a) the angular velocity would match those of slow ~15 km/s meteors;
b) the 20 second duration, while long, is certainly not impossible for a meteor;
c) the fragmentation observed occurs with slow asteroidal origin meteors as well.

Combining all these arguments,  my conclusion was that this was not a space debris reentry, but an asteroidal origin, slow meteoritic fireball. This was vindicated shortly later by the multistation camera results of Bill Cooke and his group, which yielded an unambiguous speed of 15.5 km/s and as a result a heliocentric orbit, showing that this was not space debris but a slow chunk of asteroid or Jupiter Family comet.

In defense of the American Meteor Society (who do great work on fireballs): it is not easy to characterize objects this slow, certainly not from single camera images and visual eyewitness reports. Given the slow character and profuse fragmentation, it is not that strange that the AMS initially (but incorrectly) thought it concerned a space debris reentry. It does go to show that you have to be extremely careful in drawing conclusions about slow moving fireballs: not every very long duration fragmenting fireball is space debris.

Testing a new lens for GEO and HEO (SamYang 2.0/135 mm)

The past week brought some clear skies. It also brougt me a new lens, a SamYang 2.0/135 mm ED UMC.

This lens had been on my wish-list for a while, as a potential replacement for the 1979-vintage Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180 mm I hitherto used for imaging faint Geosynchronous (GEO) and Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) objects, objects which are typically in the magnitude +10 to +14 range.

The 2.0/135 mm SamYang lens has gotten raving reviews on photography websites, several of these reviews noting that the optical quality of this lens is superior to that of a Canon 2.0/135L lens. And this while it retails at only half the price of an L-lens (it retails for about 460 to 500 Euro).

While I have the version with the Canon EF fitting, the SamYang lens is also available with fittings for various other camera brands.

Focussing is very smooth and easy with this lens. Unlike a Canon-L lens, the SamYang lens is fully manual (both focus and F-stop), but for astrophotography, manually focussing is mandatory anyway. The general build of the lens is solid. It is made of a combination of metal and plastic.

While not particularly lightweight, the lens is lighter in weight than my 1979-vintage Zeiss (which is all-metal and built like a tank, in true DDR fashion). The SamYang has a somewhat larger aperture (6.75 cm) than the Zeiss (6.42 cm), meaning it can image fainter objects. It also has a notably wider field of view (9 x 7 degrees, while the Zeiss has 7 x 5 degrees).

So for me, this seemed to be the ideal lens for GEO and HEO.

And after two test nights I can confirm: this SamYang lens indeed is spectacularly sharp. The first test images, made on January 15 and 16, have truely impressed me. Even at full F2.0 aperture, it is sharp from the center all the way to the edges and corners of the image.

Here is a comparison of the image center and the upper right corner of an image, at true pixel level. There is hardly any difference in sharpness:

click to enlarge

The images below, taken with the SamYang on a Canon EOS 80D, are crops of larger images, all but one at true pixel level.

The first image is a test image from January 15, a nice clear evening. It shows two objects in HEO: a Russian piece of space debris (a Breeze-M tank), and the classified American SIGINT satellite TRUMPET 1 (1994-026A). Note how sharp the trails are (this is a crop at true pixel level):

Click image to enlarge

The next night, January 16, I imaged several geostationary objects (which at my 51 degree north latitude are low in the sky, generally (well) below 30 degrees elevation). While the sky was reasonably clear, there were lingering aircraft contrails in the sky, locally producing some haze. Geostationary objects showed up well however, better than they generally did in the Zeiss images in the past.

The image below, which is a crop of a larger image, is not true pixel size, but slightly reduced in size to fit several objects in one image. It shows the Orion Nebula, several unclassified commercial GEO-sats, the Russian military comsat KOSMOS 2538 (BLAGOVEST 14L), and the classified Italian military communications satellite SICRAL 1B (2009-020A):

Click image to enlarge

The images below are all crops at true pixel level. The first one shows the US classified SIGINT satellite PAN/NEMESIS I (2009-047A), shadowing the commercial satellite telephony satellite YAHSAT 1B. It also shows a number of other unclassified commercial GEO-sats.

PAN/NEMESIS 1 is an NSA operated satellite that eavesdrops on commercial satellite telephony (see my 2016 article in The Space Review).

Note that this image - just like the next images- was taken at very low elevation, and from a light-polluted town center.

click image to enlarge

The image below shows another US classified SIGINT satellite, Mentor 4 (2009-001A), an ADVANCED ORION satellite. It shadows the commercial satellite telephony satellite THURAYA 2 (more backgrounds on this in my 2016 article in The Space Review). At magnitude +8, it is one of the brightest geosynchronous objects in the sky (note how it is much brighter than THURAYA 2):

click to enlarge

The last image below again is a classified US military SIGINT satellite, MERCURY 2 (1996-026A). While 24 years old it is, together with its even slightly older sibling MERCURY 1 (which I also imaged but is not in this image), probably still operational:

Click image to enlarge

After these two test nights, I am very enthusiastic about the SamYang lens. It is incredibly sharp, also in the corners, easy to focus, goes deep (in terms of faint objects), and overall performs excellent. I also like the wide field of view (compared to the 180 mm Zeiss which I previously used to target GEO). Together with the equally well performing SamYang 1.4/85 mm, it might be the ideal lens for imaging GEO and HEO.

Astrometric data on the targetted satellites from these test images are here and here. The astrometric solutions on the star backgrounds in the images had a standard deviation of about 2".

Added 20 Jan 2020:

This last image (reduced in resolution to fit) was taken this evening (20 January) and shows Trumpet 1 (1994-026A) passing the Pleiades:

Click image to enlarge

Imaging Starlink 2

click to enlarge

A new set of 60 Starlink satellites, Starlink 2 (the third launch), was launched by SpaceX early on January 7th. Over the past 10 days, all passes were in earth shadow for my 51 degree North latitude, but as of this weekend, the satellites start to make low visible passes in evening twilight.

Yesterday evening was one of the first opportunities. The Starlink satellite "train", already dispersing as their orbits are raised, would make a pass low south with a maximum elevation at 28 degrees, where they would enter earth shadow.

Conditions were dynamic, with fields of clouds moving in the sky. Initially, the part of the sky where they should be brightest was obscured by a cloud, so I pointed the camera more west and lower in the sky.

The image below is a stack of 65 images, 5 seconds exposure each with 1 second intervals, taken between 17:52:50 - 17:59:15 UT (representing a 6m 25s period), with a Canon EOS 80D and EF 2.5/50 mm Macro lens set at F2.8, 1000 ISO. There is a band of Starlink objects, diagonally from lower right to upper left crossing behind the tree. These are objects in the 'head' of the Starlink 2 main "train":

click to enlarge

When the sky near the satellite culmination point also cleared of the field of clouds, I repositioned the camera to that point and captured the last part of the main "train" tail.

The first image below is a stack of 10 images, taken between 17:59:30 - 18:00:30 UT, representing a 1-minute period. The objects can be seen entering earth shadow at left.

The second image below is a single shot image (5-second exposure) from that series, showing four Starlink objects.

click image to enlarge

click image to enlarge

Near their culmination point, the Starlink satellites were clear naked-eye objects, with a brightness of approximately mag. +2.5 tot +3.0.

The images were taken from the center of Leiden town in the Netherlands, in a twilight sky that suffers quite some light pollution.

Nine months after the Indian ASAT test: what is left?

click to enlarge

Yesterday it was 9 months ago that India conducted its first succesful Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test, destroying it's MICROSAT-R satellite on-orbit with a PDV Mark II missile fired from Abdul Kalam Island. I earlier wrote several blogposts about it, as well as an in-depth OSINT analysis in The Diplomat (in which I showed that the Indian narrative on how this test was conducted, can be questioned).

Over the past year, I have periodically written an update on the debris from this test remaining on orbit. In this post I again revisit the situation, nine months after the test.

At the time of the test, the Indian DRDO claimed that all debris would have reentered within 45 days after the test. As I pointed out shortly after the test in my blogpost here and in my article in The Diplomat, that was a very unrealistic estimate. This was underlined in the following months.

A total of 125 larger debris fragments have been catalogued as well-tracked. Over 70 percent of these larger tracked debris pieces from the test were still on-orbit 45 days after the test (the moment they all should have been gone according to the Indian DRDO!).

Now, nine months after the test, 18 of these debris fragments, or 14 percent, are still on orbit. Their orbits are shown in red in the image in top of this post (the white orbit is that of the ISS, shown as reference).

In the diagram below, the number of objects per week reentering  since the ASAT test is shown in blue. In grey, is a future prediction for the reentry of the remaining 14% of debris. The last pieces might linger untill mid-2023:

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

All but four of the remaining pieces currently have apogee altitudes well above the orbital altitude of the ISS, in the altitude range of many operational satellites. Nine of them have apogee altitudes above 1000 km, one of them up to 1760 km. Their perigees are all below ~280 km.

click to enlarge

The stars did not align well for Starliner, it seems

click map to enlarge

Yesterday's Boeing CST-100 Starliner Orbital Flight Test was a true nailbiter. This blogpost briefly reitterates what happened, and what could have happened had they not been able to eventually raise the orbit.

Launched atop an Atlas V rocket, this uncrewed inaugural test flight of the new Boeing Starliner crew transport vehicle should have gone on its way to a docking at the ISS today, followed by undocking and landing at the White Sands Missile Range a week from now. The map above which I prepared pre-launch from information in the Starliner Press Kit and Starliner Notebook, shows what should have been the launch track and some keypoints on that track. As we now know, it went wrong at one of these keypoints.

Launch was at 11:36:43 UT. The Atlas V and Centaur upper stage performed fine, the Centaur inserting the Starliner in a 76 x 191 km suborbital trajectory some 12 minutes after launch. Three minutes later, the Starliner separated from the Centaur.

Next, 31 minutes after launch near 12:08 UT, it should have fired its own thrusters, in order to raise perigee and in this way circularize the orbit, becoming truely orbital.

And that went wrong.

Due to a misfunctioning Mission Elapsed Time clock, the Starliner's orbit insertion burn did not go as planned. Initially, an "attitude problem" was reported as well. The next half hour or so was nailbiting, as Boeing and NASA were not quite coming forward with information, apart from the ambiguous comment that the Starliner had "stabilized" its orbit (which is extremely ambiguous wording).

Those of us who know about orbits, realised that if no orbit insertion burn took place, the Starliner would continue on a suborbital trajectory, and reenter with or shortly after the Centaur upper stage (see also the end of this post, where I modelled this). The Centaur reentry was expected to occur south of Australia at about 12:30-12:35 UT (see the map in top of this post), and as the clock approached that time, it became really nailbiting: was the Starliner crew module still on orbit, or breaking up and burning up over the Indian Ocean?

Eventually, it became clear that, many minutes after the original burn time, Boeing did manage to do a burn that raised perigee from 76 to 180 km.

As an interesting sidenote: during the post-launch press conference, Boeing's Jim Chilton seemed to suggest (at 7:25 in below video) that following the timer anomaly, they tried to uplink new commands, but were faced with delays caused by the relay satellite(s) used (TDRS). It also transpired that on a crewed flight, the crew itself would have intervened in this stage:





Orbital data released by CSpOC provided the first unambiguous information to the world about the whereabouts of Starliner. A pre-burn orbit appeared first, showing a 76 x 191 suborbital orbit. As this was pre-burn, this still did not say much about Starliner's state. But shortly after that, a 186 x 221 km orbit was published, somewhat later followed by a new 180 x 221 km orbit. These showed that Starliner had reached a safe orbit around the earth.

The diagram below shows the altitudes of apogee and perigee of the orbit published so far (21 december 12 UT): currently it is in a 241 x 265 km orbit.

click diagram to enlarge

The amount of fuel spent in the emergency manoeuvres after the planned burn did not occur, was thus that it was no longer feasible to reach and dock to the ISS. Over the night, a new burn or series of burns therefore raised the orbit to 241 x 265 km, 58.4 degree inclined, lining it up for a landing at White Sands Missile Range on Sunday 22 December.

The current orbit (epoch 19355.3601887) results in a landing opportunity at White Sands between 12:45-12:55 UT on Sunday 22 December, approaching the range from over the eastern Pacific, as can be seen in the map I prepared below:

click map to enlarge

This is based on the current (epoch 19355.3601887) orbit. If new orbit adjustments happen, the projected time of landing might change slightly (e.g. a lowering of the orbit would make the Starliner speed ahead a bit, resulting in a slightly earlier landing time).

[UPDATE 21 Dec 22:15 UT: NASA has announced that the landing will be around 12:57 UT]

What if the orbit raise had failed completely?

Starting from the first, pre-boost orbit released, 76 x 191 km, I used GMAT to model what would have happened. I find that the Starliner, had it continued in that orbit, would have reentered over Polynesia around 12:50 UT,  about 1h 15m after launch, with its first revolution still uncompleted:

click map to enlarge

An interesting CRS-19 Falcon upper stage deorbit area (UPDATED)

click map to enlarge

The Maritime Broadcast Warnings with the hazard areas for the upcoming December 4 SpaceX DRAGON CRS-19 supply mission to the ISS have appeared a few days ago.

These include a Broadcast Warning for the Falcon 9 upper stage deorbit area. And that deorbit area (depicted in red in the map above) has an odd position and timeframe:

HYDROPAC 3933/19

SOUTHERN INDIAN OCEAN.
DNC 02, DNC 03, DNC 04.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS, SPACE DEBRIS
042302Z TO 042344Z DEC, ALTERNATE
052240Z TO 052322Z DEC
IN AREA BOUND BY
58-52S 050-29E, 55-59S 052-23E,
55-26S 059-28E, 54-58S 065-18E,
54-08S 073-22E, 52-46S 083-57E,
51-25S 091-09E, 49-01S 100-13E,
46-34S 108-49E, 44-49S 113-54E,
46-47S 116-19E, 52-02S 109-55E,
52-57S 108-32E, 56-09S 102-10E,
59-05S 092-54E, 61-08S 081-09E,
61-48S 071-27E, 61-08S 060-26E.
2. CANCEL THIS MSG 060022Z DEC 19.//

Authority: PACMISRANFAC 250217Z NOV 19.

Date: 290929Z NOV 19
Cancel: 06002200 Dec 19


With DRAGON CRS launches, the Falcon 9 upper stage deorbit usually happens in the second part of the first revolution, south of Australia or in the southern Pacific. See e.g. the deorbit area for the Falcon 9 upper stage of CRS-17 from May this year, depicted in blue in the map above.

But not this time. The Maritime Broadcast Warning above suggests that the CRS-19 upper stage deorbit happens much later, about 5.5 hours or 3.5 revolutions after launch. In addition, the area is shifted southwards compared to the CRS-19 ground track, indicating a deorbit from an orbital inclination clearly higher than the 51.6 degrees orbital inclination of the DRAGON. In fact, it fits an orbital inclination in the order of of 57-58 degrees, i.e. some 5 degrees higher in inclination.

So that is odd.

The prolonged on-orbit time might be a coasting test with an eye on future missions that require coasting over several revolutions. The indicated inclination change might likewise be a test for a future mission requirement.

I have been entertaining the possibility of an undisclosed cubesat rideshare, to a ~58 degree inclination orbit. But that remains pure speculation and is perhaps not very likely.

Note: in the map in top of this post, the dashed white line is the DRAGON CRS-19 trajectory up to 23:45 UT (Dec 4), the end of the timewindow given by the Maritime Broadcast Warning for the Falcon upper stage deorbit.


UPDATE 4 Dec 2019 10:15 UT:

During the CRS-19 pre-launch press conference yesterday, the SpaceX Director of Dragon Mission Management, Jessica Jensen, said the Falcon 9 upper stage is doing a "thermal demonstration" after the CRS-19 orbit insertion, that amounts to a six-hour coasting phase:




In reply to reporter questions she provided slightly more details somewhat later in the press conference, adding that the test is done at the request of a customer for future missions that require a long coast. During the long coast phase, they will a.o. measure the thermal environment in the fuel tanks. The apparent ~5 degree orbital inclination change was not mentioned:

A reanalysis of the Trident SLBM test of 10 September 2013 and other tests

9 May 2019 Trident-II D5 test launch from USS Rhode Island in front of Florida
Photo: John Kowalski/US Navy

NOTE: This post reanalyses a case from September 2013 that turned out to be a Trident SLBM test launch. New information on the launch trajectory allows to glean information on the missile's apogee. The 10 September 2013 test launch trajectory is compared to those of several other Atlantic Trident test launches in subsequent years. 

Elements of this re-analysis were already published in May of this year in two Twitter threads here and here. As Twitter is highly ephemeral in nature, this blog post serves to preserve and consolidate the two analysis.

*********

On 9 May 2019, I noted a Maritime Broadcast Warning issued for the period of May 9 to 12, that clearly defined the trajectory of  a Trident-II SLBM test in the Atlantic (this was was later confirmed to be a Trident test launch from the submarine USS Rhode Island):

NAVAREA IV 394/2019 

(Cancelled by NAVAREA IV 403/2019)

WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC.
FLORIDA.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS, ROCKET LAUNCHING
   091340Z TO 120026Z MAY IN AREAS BOUND BY:
   A. 28-53N 080-01W, 29-00N 079-35W, 28-55N 078-58W,
      28-38N 079-00W, 28-40N 079-37W, 28-50N 080-01W.
   B. 28-34N 076-26W, 28-24N 075-24W, 28-10N 075-27W,
      28-21N 076-29W.
   C. 27-45N 070-22W, 27-14N 068-45W, 26-48N 068-56W,
      27-18N 070-32W.
   D. 17-46N 045-38W, 16-22N 042-18W, 15-44N 042-36W,
      17-09N 045-55W.
   E. 15-47S 004-32E, 17-17S 007-04E, 17-10S 007-08E,
      17-29S 007-49E, 17-20S 007-52E, 17-19S 008-07E,
      17-28S 008-12E, 17-41S 008-04E, 17-45S 008-14E,
      18-27S 007-50E, 17-51S 006-44E, 17-43S 006-50E,
      16-11S 004-16E.
2. CANCEL THIS MSG 120126Z MAY 19.

071718Z MAY 2019 EASTERN RANGE 071600Z MAY 19.

The five hazard areas defined in the Broadcast Warning correspond to: the launch area in front of the coast of Florida; the splash-down zones of the three booster stages;  and the MIRV target area in front of the Namibian coast. This is what it looks like when the coordinates are mapped - the dashed line in the map below is a modelled simple ballistic trajectory between the lauch area and target area:

click map to enlarge

The case brought me back six years, to September 2013, when I was asked to look at photographs made by German astrophotographer Jan Hattenbach that showed something mysterious. I suggested it was a missile test, a suggestion which was later confirmed.

In this blog post, I revisit the 2013 analysis in the light of new information about this test, and compare it to other tests for which I could find trajectory information.

In the evening of 10 September 2013, Jan Hattenbach was making a time-lapse of the night sky near the GranTeCa dome at the Roque de los Muchachos observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands, at 2300 meter altitude.

Suddenly, a strange fuzzy objects producing cloudy "puffs" moved through the sky. I wrote about it in two blog posts in 2013 (here, and follow-up here), identifying the phenomena as a Trident-II SLBM test launch conducted from a US Navy Ohio-class submarine.

This is Hattenbach's time lapse of the phenomena: the fuzzy cloud moving from bottom center to upper left is the missile (the other moving object briefly visible above the dome is a Russian satellite, Kosmos 1410). The distinct "puffs" are likely the missile's Post-Boost Control System (PBCS) reorienting while deploying RV's during the post-boost phase:





Here is a stack of the frames from the time-lapse, and a detail of one of the frames:

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

At that time, Ted Molczan had managed to dig up a Broadcast Warning that appeared to be for the MIRV target area:

( 090508Z SEP 2013 )
HYDROLANT 2203/2013 (57) 
(Cancelled by HYDROLANT 2203/2013)

SOUTH ATLANTIC.
ROCKETS.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS 091400Z TO 140130Z SEP
   IN AREA BOUND BY
   09-18S 000-26W, 09-50S 000-32E,
   12-03S 002-39E, 13-40S 004-09E,
   14-09S 003-49E, 13-06S 001-56E,
   11-05S 000-58W, 10-55S 001-05W,
   09-56S 000-50W.
2. CANCEL THIS MSG 140230Z SEP 13.


The case of May this year made me realize there should be Broadcast Warnings for the launch area and stage splashdown zones as well. Searching the database for such Navigational Warnings, I indeed managed to find them, as a separate Broadcast Warning:

( 082155Z SEP 2013 )
NAVAREA IV 546/2013 (24,25,26) 
(Cancelled by NAVAREA IV 546/2013)

WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC.
ROCKETS.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS 091400Z TO 140130Z SEP
   IN AREAS BOUND BY:
   A. 28-57N 076-17W, 28-56N 075-54W,
      28-44N 075-11W, 28-29N 075-13W,
      28-43N 076-17W.
   B. 27-53N 073-02W, 28-14N 072-56W,
      27-58N 071-52W, 27-46N 071-08W,
      27-38N 071-11W, 27-39N 071-43W,
      27-39N 071-48W, 27-41N 072-04W.
   C. 26-42N 066-58W, 26-16N 065-36W,
      25-37N 063-38W, 25-18N 063-35W,
      25-06N 063-42W, 25-02N 063-52W,
      25-39N 065-51W, 26-07N 067-12W.
   D. 15-59N 043-47W, 16-51N 043-14W,
      15-54N 040-54W, 14-19N 038-09W,
      13-48N 038-28W, 13-30N 039-26W.
2. CANCEL THIS MSG 140230Z SEP 13.

When the coordinates of these two Broadcast Warnings are mapped, they define a clear trajectory for this test (map below). It is somewhat different from the hypothetical trajectory we reconstructed in 2013 (the launch site is at a different location, much closer to Florida) and it is very similar to that of the recent May 2019 test. The dashed line is, again, a modelled simple Ballistic trajectory between the launch area and MIRV impact area, this time fitting the hazard areas extremely well:

click map to enlarge

The trajectory depicted is for an apogee height of 1800 km. This altitude was found by modelling ballistic trajectories for various apogee altitudes, and next looking which one of them matches the actual sky positions seen in Hattenbach's photographs from La Palma best.

In order to do so, I astrometrically measured Jan Hattenbach's images in AstroRecord, measuring RA and declination of the missile in each image using the stars on the images as a reference. The starmap below shows these measured sky positions, as red crosses.

When compared to various modelled apogee altitudes (black lines in the starmap), the measured positions best match an apogee altitude of ~1800 km:

click starmap to enlarge

So, we have learned something new about the Trident-II D5 apogee from Hattenbach's La Palma observations. At 1800 km the apogee is a bit higher than initially expected (ICBM/SLBM apogees normally are in the 1200-1400 km range).

This is how it approximately looks like in 3D (green lines depict the approximate trajectories of the missile stages). The ground range of this test was about 9800 km:

click to enlarge

Out of curiosity, and now knowing what to look for in terms of locations, I next searched the Broadcast Warning database for more Broadcast Warnings connected to potential Trident-II tests. I found six of them between 2013 and 2019, including the 10 September 2013 and 9 May 2019 test launches. It concerns additional test launches in June 2014, March 2016, June 2016, and June 2018. Putting them on a map reveals some interesting patterns, similarities and dissimilarities:

click map to enlarge

The set of Broadcast warnings points to at least two different launch areas, and three different MIRV target areas.

The two launch areas are in front of the Florida coast, out of Port Canaveral. One (labelled A in the map) is located some 60 km out of the coast, the other (labelled B in the map) is further away, some 400 km out of the coast.

I suspect that the area closest to Florida is used for test launches special enough to gather an audience of high ranking military officials. The recent test of 9 May 2019 belongs into this category, as well as a test in June 2014, and also the infamous British Royal Navy test of June 2016 (I will tell you why this test has become infamous a bit later in this blog post).

As to why area A is tapered and area B isn't, I am not sure, except that the launch location for these tests could perhaps be more defined, restrained by the audience that needs a good, predefined and safe spot to view it.

Click map to enlarge

Not only are there two different launch locations near Florida, but likewise there are at least three different MIRV target areas near Africa.

Four tests, including the 10 September 2013 test imaged by Hattenbach, target the same general area, some 1000 km out of the coast of Angola (indicated as 'impact area 1' in the map below). Two of the tests however target a slightly different location.

click map to enlarge

One of these two deviating tests is the earlier mentioned infamous Trident-II test by the British Royal Navy from June 2016.

This test has become notorious because the Trident missile, fired from the submarine HMS Vengeance, never made it to the target area. Instead it took a wrong course after launch, towards Florida (!)  and had to be destroyed. That test had a planned target area (dark green in the map above) somewat shortrange from the other tests, closer to Ascension island. This is the shortest ground range test of all the tests discussed here, approximately 8900 km, some 1000 km short of most other tests. Incidently, the choice of launch area indicates this failed test had a launch audience, so I reckon some top brass was not amused that day.

The other is the recent 9 May 2019 test. This US Navy test had a target area (red in the map above) some 400 km out of the African coast, further downrange from previous tests. This is the longest range test of all the tests discussed here, with a ground range of approximately 10 700 km, about 700 km longer than the other tests. From the choice of launch area, this test too might have had a launch audience.

The other tests had a range of 9600 to 9900 km. The different ranges could point to different payload masses (e.g. number or type of RV's), different missile configurations, or different test constraints.

There have certainly been many more Trident-II tests than the six I could identify in Broadcast Warnings (e.g. see the list here). Why these didn't have Broadcast Warnings issued, or why I was not able to identify those if they were issued, I do not know.

The Trident-II is a 3-staged Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile with nuclear warheads. The missile is an important part of US and British nuclear deterrance strategies. The missiles are caried by both US and British Ballistic Missile submarines.

click to enlarge

Edit 23 Oct 2019:
Considering the Trident-II D5 range, the US Navy clearly needs to update it's own 'fact file' here (which at the time of writing lists a maximum range of 7360 km, well short of the distances found in this analysis)

The structure of space: orbital families

click diagram to enlarge

Asteroid observers are well acquainted with the kind of diagram above: a plot of the semi-major axis of the orbit against orbital inclination. Doing this for asteroids allows to discern resonances, and clusters visible in such a diagram point to related objects with a shared origin (asteroid 'families').

The diagram above is however not showing asteroids in heliocentric orbits, but is a similar diagram showing orbits for all 18439 well-tracked artificial objects (satellites, rocket stages and debris) in orbit around our Earth. A number of clusters can be seen: the distribution of the objects in a-i space (*) is not random but structured.

The structure corresponds to satellites with a specific purpose (and the related rocket stages and debris), or from a specific family. Some functions of satellites demand a specific type of orbit distinguishable in a-i space.

Well recognizable clusters for example in the plot above, are Geosynchronous satellites; and satellites in HEO ('Molniya') orbit. These are often communication or SIGINT satellites. NAVSTAR navigation satellites (GPS) form a recognizable cluster too.

Two loose clusters of objects can be seen that correspond to Geostationary Transfer Orbits (GTO). These are the rocket stages left from launches into Geostationary orbit. They move in eccentric orbits with low inclination. Two groups can be discerned: those launched from Kourou in French Guyana by ESA, and those launched from Cape Canaveral by NASA and NRO. The fact that these two groups group and distinguish in inclination, is because the inclination of GTO launches correlates to the latitude of the launch site.

Some clusters are debris clusters which are the result of the breakup of objects (usually exploding rocket stages) in space: two of these are indicated in the plot above.

Interesting is also the cluster that represents Earth Observation satellites in sun-synchronous Polar orbit. Let us look at this part of the plot in more detail:

click diagram to enlarge

Sun-synchronous objects are objects in orbits designed to have a rate of RAAN (node) precession that matches the precession of the sun in Right Ascension. This is beneficial to optical remote sensing observations of the earth, as it means the orbital plane moves along with the shift in Right Ascension of the sun, thus ensuring that images are made around the same solar time each day, which aids shadow analysis.

The objects in this cluster display a clear obliquely slanted trend in a-i space. This is because the sunsynchronous character of an orbit is a function of semi-major axis, eccentricity and orbital inclination. Hence, a specific orbital inclination is necessary for each orbital altitude, causing the slant in the distribution in the plot above.

[EDIT 19 oct 2019, 21:55 UT]

In the diagram below, the black line is the theoretical trend in a-i space for a circular sun-synchronous orbit. For more elliptical orbits, the slant of the line is slightly different:

click diagram to enlarge

I am not entirely sure what is behind the noticable gap visible in the distribution around inclination 101 degrees. The upper sub-cluster around 102 degrees inclination contains a number of meteorological satellites, plus debris from associated, broken up rocket stages, so it might be a sub-cluster representing a specific family of satellites

A couple of other object 'families' can be seen in this detail diagram as well, as distinct clusters. There is another breakup event visible (Kosmos 1275, a Soviet navigation satellite that disintegrated in orbit some 50 days after launch), as well as two payload families, including the Iridium satellites. The Westford Needles are tiny metal rods that are the result of a weird,  ill-conceived and eventually abandoned communication experiment during 1961 and 1963 (read more here).


* note: a-i means: semi major axis (a) versus orbital inclination (i)

Six months after India's ASAT test

Six months ago today, on 27 March 2019 at 5:42:15 UT, India conducted its first successful Anti Satellite (ASAT) Test, under the code name Mission Shakti. I wrote an in-depth OSINT analysis of that test published in The Diplomat in April 2019.

Part of that analysis was an assessment - also discussed in various previous posts on this blog - on how long debris from this ASAT test would stay on-orbit. Half-a-year after the test, it is time to make a tally of what is left and what is gone - and make a new estimate when the last piece will be gone.

A few more debris pieces have been catalogued by CSpOC since my last tally. As of 27 September 2019, orbits for 125 debris pieces from the ASAT test have been catalogued. Of these 125 objects, 87 (or 70%) had reentered or had likely reentered by 27 September, leaving 38 (or 30%) still on orbit.

click diagram to enlarge

click diagram to enlarge

Remember that the Indian DRDO had made the claim that all debris would have reentered 45 days after the test. This is clearly not correct: of the well-tracked debris for which we have orbits (presumably there is a lot more for which we have no orbits), only 29%, i.e. barely one-third, reentered within 45 days. Over 70% did not. At 120 days after the test, only half of the catalogued population of larger debris had reentered.

click diagram to enlarge

click diagram to enlarge

I used SatEvo to produce reentry estimates for the 38 objects still on orbit on 27 September 2019. By the end of the year, some 15 to 16 of these larger debris fragments should still remain on-orbit.

One year after the test, at the end of March 2020, about 90% of all tracked debris should have reentered. The last or the tracked debris fragments for which we have orbits, might not reenter untill mid 2024.

The current apogee altitudes of the objects on-orbit spread between 270 and 1945 km. They have now well-dispersed in RAAN too, no longer sharing the same orbital plane:

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Some 90% of the debris fragments still on-orbit have an apogee altitude above that of the ISS, meaning that they almost all have orbits that reach well into the orbital altitudes of operational satellites.