SIGINT Galore!

USA 136 (Trumpet 3), a TRUMPET in HEO. 28 Nov 2016
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The evening of 28 November was very clear - no moon and an extremely transparent sky, with temperatures around zero.

I used it to target several objects in GEO and HEO. Due to the favourable sky I could use exposure times twice as long as usual.

All the classified objects imaged were Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, i.e. eavesdropping satellites. The image above shows you one of the TRUMPET satellites, USA 136 (1997-068A), crossing through Andromeda. This is an object in a 63 degree inclined HEO orbit. The satellite was coming down from apogee at that moment and at an altitude of ~31 500 km.

Below is another object in HEO, USA 184 (2006-027A). This too is a SIGINT satellite, part of the TRUMPET-Follow On program (aka Advanced TRUMPET. It also serves as a SBIRS platform.

USA 184, a TRUMPET-FO in HEO, 28 Nov 2016
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This object was near apogee at this moment, at an altitude of 39 000 km over the Faroër Islands, which is why it looks stellar in this 20-second exposure. The star field is in Cassiopeia.

Both these objects hadn't been observed by our network for a while, hence they were somewhat off their predictions (1.5 degrees in position in the case of USA 136; and 1 degree off position in the case of USA 184).

I also briefly imaged a part of the geosynchronous belt, much lower in the sky. The targetted GEO objects were SIGINT satellites too: both Mercury 1 and Mercury 2 (1994-054A and 1996-026A), The Advanced ORION satellites Mentor 4 and Mentor 6 (2009-001A and 2012-034A) and the NEMESIS satellite PAN (2009-047A).

PAN and Mentor 4 (both shown below) have a story attached to them and were the subject of my recent article in The Space Review, which you can read here.

PAN (USA 207), a NEMESIS in GEO, 28 Nov 2016
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Mentor 4 (USA 202), an Advanced ORION in GEO, 28 Nov 2016
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Satellite observations and the Russian Metrojet crash in the Sinai [updated]

[updated 3 Nov 2015 14:00 UT]

On 31 October 2015 near 4:13 UTC, Kogalymavia Flight 9268, a Russian commercial flight by airliner Metrojet, crashed in the Egyptian Sinai desert, tragically killing all 224 people on board.

NBC News now reports that according to a US "senior defense official", around the time of this tragedy, a heat signal has been detected over the Sinai by "an American infrared satellite". According to NBC News, the heat signal detection points to an explosion (either mid-air or when the aircraft hit the ground), and the quoted official reportedly said that there is "no indication" that a surface-to-air missile hit the aircraft.

The satellite system in question which detected the heat signal is most likely the classified SBIRS (Space-Based InfraRed System), which I discussed before in the context of the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the eastern Ukraine a year ago.

It is one of two US military systems (there is the older DSP now being replaced by SBIRS) meant for the early detection of (intercontinental) missile launches. These satellites look for the infrared (heat) signature of such launches. For more details see my earlier post on MH17, and this detailed information sheet by US Defense itself available on the web.

After reading NBC's claim of a satellite detection of this latest aircraft tragedy, I checked which of the SBIRS satellites would have had coverage of the area in question at 31 October 2015, 4:13 UT.

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Two SBIRS satellites had excellent coverage: the geostationary SBIRS GEO 2 (2013-011A) satellite at longitude 20 E, and the piggyback SBIRS package on the TRUMPET-FO satellite USA 184 (2006-027A) in a Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO).

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The apparent quick confirmation of a SBIRS detection of the Sinai crash reported by NBC News not only shows the capabilities of the SBIRS system, but also begs the question why such information is still lacking with regard to the shootdown of MH17 over the Ukraine a year ago.

In my country, which lost 192 citizens in that tragedy, the downing of MH17 and the question of who is responsible for it are still a hot topic, newly fueled by the recent release of the report by the Dutch Safety Board which shows it was a BUK system that downed the aircraft.

There are tantalizing clues that SBIRS did detect the 2014 shootdown over the Ukraine: the day after the MH17 tragedy unfolded, a "senior US official" reportedly told CNN that a US military system "saw a heat signature at the time the airliner was hit".

This is a very similar statement as the one now reported in connection to the Sinai crash. At the time, I showed that three SBIRS satellites (the same two as indicated above, plus SBIRS GEO 1) had coverage of the Ukraine crash location.

Following that CNN report, this apparent infrared detection has gone into oblivion: there is no mention of it for example in the report of the Dutch Safety Board: the reconstruction of the area where the missile could have been launched is completely based on modelling from the damage pattern to the aircraft's cockpit.

I find it hard to believe, certainly given the anonymous "senior US official" quote to CNN directly after the disaster, that there are no SBIRS detections of the MH17 shootdown.

NATO interest in the area was high at that time, after all this was a quickly escalating conflict right at the border of NATO's and the European Union's influence sphere. The general perception was (and is) that Russia, increasingly seen as the new/old enemy of (east-) European freedom, is trying to expand it's own influence sphere into Europe, and is muscle-flexing towards the east European NATO members. Missiles should have been a natural point of interest to NATO, as a Ukrainian military aircraft had been shot down at high altitude in the days before the disaster with what must have been a state-of-the-art Surface-to-Air system, something which should be of concern to NATO, especially given a US military strategy that heavily relies on Air Supremacy. To me it seems that it would be very odd if US military systems like SBIRS were not watching the area.


UPDATE 3 Nov 2015, 14:00-14:30 UT:

In a Twitter conversation, Rainer Kresken rightfully points at  the weather conditions over the relevant part of the Ukraine during the MH17 tragedy. Cloud cover is detrimental to IR detections. But a SAM would still be detectable once it had cleared the cloud cover. According to the report of the Dutch Safety Board, the cloudbase present in the general area around the time of the crash was scattered and between 1000 and 5000 feet (300 meter to 1.5 km) with occasional peaks of the top of the cloud deck to FL350 (350 000 35 000 feet, 10.7 km). These latter were localized thunderstorms. Airfields in the vicinity report scattered clouds at 3300 feet (1 km) and a broken cloud cover at higher altitude, 10000 to 20000 feet (3 to 6 km). This all suggests that a missile would have been visible once clearing 1 km altitude, unless it was cruising through a cumulus tower from a thunderstorm.
Most relevant to me is still that tantalizing CNN quote of a "senior US official" reporting a heat signal, suggesting that there was a SBIRS detection of the missile above the cloud cover.

SBIRS, SIGINT and the MH17 tragedy (updated)

Yesterday 17 July near 13:15 UT, 298 people including at least 173 189 192 of my countrymen perished when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed over the eastern Ukraine, reportedly after being hit by a missile.

This is a terrible tragedy. Among the victims are complete families, including children. It is the start of the holidays in the Netherlands, and the flight carried many Dutch families on their way to their holiday destinations in southeast Asia. My thoughts are with these highly stricken families.

For me personally, it is an unnerving fact that I was about to fly the same route from Amsterdam to southeast Asia only a few days later.

In the wake of the incident, accusations fly between the Ukrainians, pro-Russian separatists and Russians, all accusing each other of being responsible for this tragedy. At the moment it is difficult to say which bits of information floating around are true and which are false. I strongly suspect that the current suspicion against Russian-backed separatists will hold though. Some less ambiguous evidence (e.g. the location of the crash, which is close to the locations where separatists earlier downed two other (military) aircraft) certainly seem to suggest this. But we will see: at the moment, nothing is certain.

Of interest to this blog, is that US Intelligence officials have confirmed that the aircraft was hit by a surface-to-air missile, according to several US media. Senior US officials appear to have told CNN that they detected a radar signal from a surface-to-air missile system being turned on right before the crash, and that they also detected a 'heat signature' at the time the aircraft was lost.

If the CNN report is correct, it is highly likely that the 'heat signature' detection was a space-born detection by the SBIRS system of infra-red early warning satellites. I have written about this satellite system before, in the context of that other recent tragedy with a Malaysian Airlines flight, the disappeared flight MH370.

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Three of the four SBIRS satellites, SBIRS GEO 1 (2011-019A) and SBIRS GEO 2 (2013-011A) in geostationary orbit and USA 184 (2006-027A) in HEO, had coverage of the area where MH17 went down at the time this happened (17 July 14:15 GMT, see image above).

SBIRS and SIGINT platform USA 184, imaged on 20 March 2014

SBIRS GEO 2 imaged on 20 June 2014

It is possible that the quoted detection of a missile radar tracking system activation around the time of the disaster was done by satellites too. Several SIGINT and ELINT satellites cover this area, including various MENTOR (ORION) satellites and one MERCURY satellite in GEO, and USA 184, which is both a TRUMPET-FO SIGINT satellite and a SBIRS platform, in HEO. That these SIGINT satellites amongst others serve to detect and monitor signals from military radar and missile systems, is known. Given the interest of the USA and NATO in closely watching military developments in the Ukraine conflict, it is almost certain that some of these are targetting the area.

The question is, whether these satellites can help pinpoint the location from where the missile was launched, and hence provide an indication of who did it (Ukrainian forces, separatist militia, or the Russians).

I suspect they can. If the SIGINT detections were indeed done by satellites, it is known that the US recently made large progress in geolocating the origin of detected signals. In a speech from September 2010 available on the NRO website, NRO director Bruce Carlson specifically remarked on the NRO's increasing capability to geolocate using SIGINT:

"I will tell you that just in the last 24 months, we’ve improved the accuracy of geo-location by nearly an order of magnitude, and we’re going to continue to do that and bring it down. We’re getting to the point where here very, very shortly, within the very near term, we will be able to target using signals intelligence". 

If they indeed have a SIGINT detection of the missile's radar system (and the CNN quote seems to say that), the character of the signature might yield information on what missile system was used (i.e. if it was indeed an SA-17/BUK).

Likewise, and although as far as I know no exact public information is available on the accuracy of this kind of detections (update: but see the update at the end of this post!) , I suspect that the  'heat signature' detections of the missile launch,  if indeed SBIRS infra-red detections, are also accurate enough to geolocate the launch site (and whether that is in Ukranian held, or separatist held territory).

A SBIRS platform has two sensors: one in staring mode, and one in scanning mode. The staring scanning mode sensor watches for heat signatures over a wide semi-global area. The scanning staring sensor targets specific regions, and when the staring scanning sensor detects a signature, the scanning staring sensor (at least according to some sources) can be employed to further pinpoint and track this event (more sources amongst others here, here and here). The goal of SBIRS reportedly is to be able to track launches, pinpoint launch sites and accurately predict potential target locations from the tracking data. That needs quite accurate tracking.

(note added: a 1-hour timezone conversion error in the original version of this post has been corrected)

Update 19/07/2014: Daniel Fischer managed to dig up this unclassified presentation from 2006, which shows that SBIRS indeed can detect SAM. Pages 2 and 3 mention the capability to pinpoint the launch location. 

Rainer Kresken has raised the legitimate question of the cloud cover present at the time of the shootdown. Water vapour obscures Infra Red, which means the cloud cover might have blocked detection of the initial launch phase of the SAM. The SIGINT detection of the missile system radar does not suffer from this problem.

Observing USA 184 (TRUMPET-FO/SBIRS-HEO)

It had been a while since I last observed objects in HEO (Highly Elliptical Orbit). Most of my recent focus has been on the KH-11 in Low Earth Orbit and on geosynchronous objects.

USA 184, 29 March 2014, 21:34 UTC
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Last Saturday evening I however targetted USA 184 (2006-027A), a classified US military satellite in HEO which hovered almost in the zenith for my locality during the observation. It is the tiny trail indicated by the arrow in the image above, taken with my Canon EOS 60D and a 2.8/180mm Zeiss Sonnar MC. Stars in the image belong to Ursa maior.

A Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) is an orbit which is highly eccentric ("elliptical") with a low perigee at only a few hundred kilometers altitude (usually in the southern hemisphere) and a high apogee, often in the 20 000 to 39 000 km altitude range. The orbit is typically inclined by about 63 degrees.  USA 184 is in a 63.58 degrees inclined, 1590 x 38 760 km orbit.

USA 184, orbital position 29 March 2014 21:34 UTC

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Satellites in such an orbit spend a long time near the apogee of the orbit. As a result, they hover high above the northern hemisphere for many hours a day. Just like a geosynchronous orbit, this allows long duration coverage of a (large) area. The difference with a geosynchronous orbit is that a HEO orbit is well suited to cover high polar latitudes, while a geosynchronous orbit has a poor coverage of such high latitudes. HEO orbits are therefore typically used for applications that demand long-duration coverage of high Northern latitudes. It concerns communications satellites (notably by the Russians), SIGINT satellites and Infrared Early Warning satellites.

USA 184 falls in the latter two categories. It is a TRUMPET-FO (the FO stands for "follow-on", i.e. it is an improved version of the older TRUMPET) SIGINT satellite. In addition, it has a piggyback SBIRS (Space Based Infrared System) package, which is dedicated to the detection of ICBM launches by their Infrared signatures. It is one of two HEO sensors in the SBIRS system (the other one is on USA 200, 2008-010A), in addition to the two dedicated SBIRS satellites in geostationary orbit (SBIRS-GEO 1 and SBIRS-GEO 2, 2011-019A and 2013-011A).

At the time of the observation, USA 184 was at an altitude of  38 355 km over the Northern Atlantic at 62.74 N, 4.84 W. It was almost in its apogee, and hovered at 76 degrees elevation in the sky. This is the approximate view from the satellite at that time:

view from USA 184, 29 March 21:34 UTC

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The images below are uniform patches related to the launch of USA 184 (as NROL-22 on 27 June 2006), and the SBIRS program:

note: the orbital diagrams were made with JSatTrak software and amateur orbital elements calculated by Mike McCants.

Open Question: Could US Military SIGINT satellites help to narrow down flight MH370's last location?

Please note: this post contains discussions of a highly speculative nature

Over the past days, it has become clear that the lost Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has flown on for some 7 hours after contact was lost at 17:20 UT (March 7 UT, local March 8). This information comes from radio "ping-backs" of the aircraft's ACARS system received by the Inmarsat 3-F1 satellite, a geostationary communications satellite that is located at longitude 64 E over the Indian Ocean. These ping-backs were received hours after the last radio contact with the pilots and hours after the transponder was shut off, and indicate that the aircraft was still powered and 'alive' hours after it disappeared. A well written story at the CNN website gives backgrounds on the receptions and the system.

Position and footprint of Inmarsat 3-F1
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In this post, I will briefly summarize how Inmarsat 3-F1 detected the aircraft and determined a wide arc where the aircraft could have been at that time. I will then explore whether additional signal receipts by classified US Military Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) satellites might perhaps have been possible. If such additional receptions exist (an open question!) they would enable to further narrow down the location of the last ping-back.

That will largely be a theoretical exercise, as so far there has been no word that the US SIGINT satellite constellation did detect these ping-backs. This post therefore entails a clear element of speculation, and the central question remains an explicit open question.


Backgrounds: 'Marco Polo' between an aircraft and a satellite

Someone in the aircraft shut off the radar transponder beacon and the active ACARS messaging system near 17:20 UT. Yet this did not fully disable the ACARS system. The system kept answering periodic "pings" by the Inmarsat 3-F1 (1996-020A) satellite. These "pings", basically a kind of "Marco?" message,  are periodically sent out by the satellite and when received by the aircraft ACARS antenna, the aircraft pings back a brief "handshake" basically saying "Polo!". While such a handshake does not contain clear information about where the aircraft is when the active ACARS is disabled, it does contain the aircraft ID.

According to press reports, the last ping-back from flight MH370 was received 7 hours after the flight disappeared, near 00:11 UT on March 8. Apparently, only Inmarsat 3-F1 received these ping-backs.

From the time it took the radio-ping to travel from Inmarsat 3-F1 to the aircraft and then back again, the distance (but not direction) of the aircraft to the satellite can be determined. For example, at a radiowave speed of 300 000 km/s, a time difference of say 0.2 seconds between Inmarsat sending the ping and receiving the answer back, indicates the aircraft is at a distance of 30 000 km from the satellite.

Once you know the distance, you can draw a globe with that radius around the location of the Inmarsat satellite. Where that globe cuts the earth surface, it creates a circle, centred on the sub-satellite point. The aircraft must have been somewhere on that circle. This is basically how the wide arc that has been published was constructed, an arc which runs from Thailand to Kazakhstan in the north, and Indonesia to Australia and the Indian Ocean in the south. The aircraft could have been anywhere on that big arc, an area stretching thousands of kilometers.

To pinpoint the aircraft more accurately to a particular spot in the arc, one needs a detection by a second and preferably a third satellite.


Could US SIGINT satellites provide additional receptions for these pings?

One source of such additional ping-back signal receptions, in theory could be one of several Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) satellites employed by the US military. Please note that I say IN THEORY as the US government hasn't provided any statements that they did (which might indicate that they didn't). In other words: I am speculating on an open question here.

It depends on a lot of factors, not the least of which are questions whether these satellites were listening at the time, and whether they were monitoring the particular VHF/UHF radiofrequencies in question. Those are questions I do not have the answers to. What I will do, is discuss which US military satellites could potentially have received these ping-backs because they had coverage of the area.

1. The Mentor and Trumpet SIGINT satellites

Two US SIGINT systems in high orbits cover(ed) the relevant area: (1) several of the very large Mentor/Advanced Orion SIGINT satellites in geostationary orbit: and (2) one of the SBIRS/TRUMPET combined SIGINT and SBIRS satellites which moves in a Highly Elliptical Orbit and hovered high above the northern hemisphere at the time.

These SIGINT satellites serve to eavesdrop on radio communications including satellite- and mobile telephony, missile telemetry and signals from groundbased and airborne radar systems.

USA 184 TRUMPET imaged on 25 Aug 2009 by the author

 Mentor 4 imaged on 18 Nov 2012 by the author

The TRUMPET satellite in HEO which had coverage of (a part of) the area at that time is  USA 184 (2006-027A). The geostationary Mentor satellites covering the area are Mentor 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (1995-022A, 2003-041A, 2009-001A, 2010-063A and 2012-034A).

Position of various Mentor satellites and TRUMPET USA 184

Mentor satellite footprints

USA 184 area coverage and footprint detail
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2. NOSS (Naval Ocean Surveillance System) SIGINT satellites

Apart from the Mentor and Trumpet SIGINT satellites in high orbits, the US also operates a series of SIGINT satellites with accurate geolocalization capabilities in a Low Earth Orbit. It concerns the US Navy Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellites, of which there are several. They operate in close pairs, orbiting at an altitude of about 1000 x 1200 km in 63 degree inclined orbits. Their main purpose is to locate and track shipping through the radio communications of the latter.

A NOSS duo (NOSS 3-4) imaged by the author on 29 Jan 2011

Two duo's of NOSS satellites were covering the northern half of the area at the time of the last ping-back received by Inmarsat 3-F1: the NOSS 3-5 and NOSS 3-6 duo's (2011-014A and B and 2012-048A and P).

The NOSS 3-6 duo had the best coverage, which includes the full northern arc from Thailand to Kazakhstan determined by the Inmarsat reception:

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position of the NOSS 3-5 and NOSS 3-6 duo at the time of the last pingback

in 3D: yellow arc is where the aircraft could be according to the Inmarsat 3-F1 reception

Chinese SIGINT

China operates a satellite system similar to the US NOSS, consisting of three satellite trio's in the Yaogan series (Yaogan 9A, B, C; 16A, B, C; 17A, B, C). None of these however had coverage of the relevant areas in the Indian Ocean, central Asia or southern Eurasia at that time.

Coverage summary

From the brief satellite coverage analysis summed up above, it seems that the northern overland arc from Thailand to Kazakhstan was potentially well covered by various US military SIGINT satellites: five Mentor satellites, a TRUMPET and a NOSS duo. The southern Indian Ocean arc is slightly less well covered (no TRUMPET or NOSS coverage) but was nevertheless in view of several geostationary Mentor SIGINT satellites.

The question now is: could one or more of these SIGINT satellites have captured the same ACARS ping-backs received by Inmarsat 3-F1? If so, the combination of their data with the Inmarsat data could potentially narrow down the last known position of the aircraft considerably.

It all depends on whether the satellites in question were actively listening at that time, and moreover, whether their monitoring includes the radio frequencies in which the ACARS ping-backs of flight MH370 operated. It perhaps also includes questions like whether any signals received are all kept on file, or if some selection is made and much deemed of no interest is directly discarded.

Those are some big serious "ifs", that I simply do not know the answers to: this stuff is, after all, classified. So far, the US government has not indicated that one of their SIGINT systems did capture the ping-backs. Which might mean that they didn't, as I can't imagine that they did not check for it.

Classified SIGINT satellite positions in this post (and previous posts) are based on orbits calculated by Mike McCants, based on amateur observations communicated on the SeeSat-L mailing list.

Addendum 18 March 2014:
In my initial analysis posted 17/03/2014, I forgot to include two other and older geostationary US SIGINT satellites: the two Mercury/ADVANCED VORTEX satellites that are located over East Africa.

 click images to enlarge

It concerns Mercury 1  (1994-054A) and Mercury 2 (1996-026A). Both satellites were recently moved to a new orbital position over East Africa and are station-keeping there, indicating they are operational. Their footprint includes the area of interest, although the southern Indian Ocean arc is close to the edge of their coverage.

Mercury 1 imaged by the author on 29 Dec 2013

Observing Geostationary Satellites from Leiden and Arizona

While the focus was on LEO and HEO satellites earlier in October, I primarily targetted Geostationary satellites last week. Both from my own locality with my own equipment, as well as by means of a "remote" telescope in Arizona.

The two images below were taken from Leiden (the Netherlands) in the early evening of October 23, using my own equipment (Canon EOS 450D + Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180mm).

They show the enigmatic, frequently re-locating PAN satellite (09-047A: see Dwayne Day's article here) and the SIGINT (eavesdropping) Mentor 4 (USA 202) satellite (09-001A), as well as a few commercial geostationary telecom objects: Hellas-sat 2 (03-020A), Thuraya 2 (03-026A) and Paksat 1R (11-042A).

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As can be seen, PAN and Hellas-sat 2 are a very close pair now, so close that I am not actually 100% sure which one is which (the westernmost one or rightmost one is likely PAN). As can be seen in comparison to this post from May, it has relocated again, from 45.0 to 38.9 E - it did so in July, when I was on hollidays.

Somewhat earlier the same week, when the sky in Leiden was overcast, I took refuge by hiring a "remote" telescope again. This time not the 61-cm of SSON, but the 37-cm Cassegrain of Winer Observatory (MPC 857) in Sonoita, Arizona, USA. While a smaller instrument, this telescope has a larger FOV which is good if the satellite is a bit off from predictions, and allows te satellite to be captured on more than one image when a 3-image run is done. Also, it is cheaper to rent.

Targets were two "usual suspects": the enigmatic Prowler (90-097E: see story and links in my previous post here) on October 17 and 21 and the SBIRS-GEO 1 (11-019A) on October 21:

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Note: because the telescope follows the stars, the satellites become trailed, unlike the images shot from Leiden which are from a stationary tripod (hence the stars trail, but the satellites not).

A few non-geostationary satellites were tracked the past two weeks as well. They include the STSS Demo 1 & 2 (09-052 A & B) and the USA 89 r/b (92-086C) on October 22, and the HEO ELINT & SBIRS platform USA 184 (06-027A) on October 15.

Recovering SDS 3-3 (USA 179) and following the UNKNOWN 101208 geosat

Our amateur network had lost track recently of the HEO satellite SDS 3-3 (USA 179, 2004-034A), so it had to be recovered. Radio doppler shift data by an amateur remaining anonymous provided enough information to Ted Molczan to issue a search orbit for visual or camera recovery.

Last evening started clear, and I quickly recovered it very close to Ted's predicted search orbit position. It was about 0.3 degrees off from the latter, so a very neat result! See the image below, the first in a series I shot yesterday with the Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180mm:

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After imaging another HEO too, the ELINT USA 184 (2006-027A), clouds came in. The situation turned very dynamic, with the sky going from clear to clouded to clear in a matter of minutes.

I wanted to see if I could image the 'mystery geostationary satellite' which I discovered on 8 December again, a satellite that has now been temporarily designated as Unknown 101208. With my initial December 8 observations and Greg Robert's December 9 & 10 observations, Mike could fit a reasonably good orbit:

Unknown 101208
1 99991U          10344.69054052 0.00000000  00000-0  00000-0 0    03
2 99991   0.0670  10.3484 0003000 147.2004 212.7996  1.00405600    05

The object is drifting eastward at a rate of about 0.5 degrees/day and is now well east of the Turksat 2A & 3A duo (it was west of them when I discovered it on the 8th). It's identity still remains a mystery. Early ideas about it being a DSCS relocating, can now be dismissed.

Under very dynamic conditions, I managed to take advantage of a clearing that lasted literally only minutes (!) to capture it again last evening, along with a few others in the same image. The latter objects were the Milstar 6 r/b (2003-012B) and Mentor 4 (USA 202, 2009-001A), and in addition the non-classified geostationaries Turksat 2A & 3A, Thuraya 2 and Express AM-1.

While the image quality was bad (quite fogged images), the object clearly showed up. Below is one of the images, showing the mystery satellite with the Turksat duo. Compare to the December 8th picture here, when the mystery satellite was still west of the Turksats:

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At last the FIA Radar 1 (NROL-41), and the first images with the new Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180

Last weekend saw my first observation, at last, of the payload of the NROL-41 launch: the FIA Radar 1 (2010-046A). At 4:25 am local time it made a pass in the northern sky over Polaris, and became visible to the naked eye at a brightness of mag +3.5. Below is one of the two pictures, plus a picture of the launch patch of NROL-41.

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The orbit of the satellite is unusual, as it is retrograde, and in fact resembles a retrograde version of the Lacrosse orbits. There is some speculation as to the why of this.

The object currently is actively manoeuvring: when I captured it, it was 34 seconds late with regard to just one day old elements after one such manoeuvre. The apparent intention is to create a frozen orbit.


A new lens added to the equipment

This weekend saw the first active use of a new piece of optics added to the repertoire: an old, DDR-made, Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180mm lens. The lens itself is renowned, for its sharpness. Originally made for 6x7 cameras, it provides very good sharpness from edge to edge on a DSLR image. Fitted with a P6 to EOS adapter, it works perfectly on my Canon EOS 450D. It yields almost twice the aperture of my EF 100/2.8, and hence will be used to capture faint distant objects such as Molniya orbit objects. The lens is of very heavy build: solid metal and glass with no plastics. It weights 1.5 kg!

Below is an image of the optics I am now using in my observations: a Canon EF 2.5/50 mm Macro used for LEO and some GEO objects; a Canon EF 2.8/100 mm Macro USM used fro MEO and HEO objects; and the Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 2.8/180 mm for HEO and GEO objects.

click image to enlarge

The advantage of the lens is that it goes deeper in magnitude of the objects it captures. A disadvantage is that it has a smaller FOV (6.8 x 5.0 degrees) which, with the software I use for astrometry (AstroRecord), means I have to carefully select the part of the sky to aim for (it should have enough stars brighter than +8 and at last 3 stars with a Flamsteed number, as the AstroRecord sequence starts with identifying 3 of those after which it starts to auto-identify stars). Especially the requirement of the 3 Flamsteed numbers in such a small FOV is limiting.
Anoher drwaback of this lens is that with 1.5 kg it is heavy! It is at the edge of what my lightweight camera tripod can carry, and hence vulnerable to vibrations.

On October 9 and 10 I used the lens to capture two Molniya-orbit (HEO) objects: USA 184 (06-027A), and USA 198 (07-060A, SDS 3F5). As a stray, it also captured another Molniya, the Russian US-KS Oko IR missile detection platform Kosmos 2393 (02-059A), and an old Russian rocket body in LEO (Kosmos 411 r, 71-041J). The image sequence shows that Kosmos 2393 was flaring at that time (20:14:02 - 20:14:12 UTC, 9 Oct 2010)

Below are two parts (at full pixel resolution) of one image that contained both USA 184 and Kosmos 2393 (the latter close to the edge of the image); and one of the images of USA 198.

click images to enlarge

Progress-M 04M, MSX, and Mentor 2

A long spell of very warm, sunny weather is resulting in several clear nights. Since my last observations reported here (those of June 2nd), I have been able to observe on June 3, 13, 14, 16, 17, 22, 24, 26 and 29. Objects include Progress-M 04M, Mentor 2, Mentor 4 (USA 202), USA 161, USA 32, USA 184, MSX, Milstar 5, the NOSS 3-1 duo, and the STSS Demo-1. This does not include a number of non-classified strays also captured.

USA 161 (01-044A) slowly flared to -1 at 23:58:59 UTC (24 Jun).

Below are a few pictures. First: UARS captured as a stray, flaring, on June 16th:

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Progress-M 04M on 26 and 29 June:

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Geostationary USA 202 (Mentor 4), in the trees low in the sky (altitude about 17.5 degrees):

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Mentor 2 (geostationary), MSX and a stray (HJ-1A, a Chinese Earth Observation Satellite)

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