The Parliament Hearing

Last Friday was the MH17 hearing of the committee for Foreign Affairs of Dutch Parliament in the Dutch Parliament building in the Hague. I had been  invited as an external expert to this hearing (see a previous post), with the task to brief the parliament members on what military satellite systems from what countries might have observed the disaster, and could potentially provide useful information with a view on the criminal prosecution of the case.

An audio record of the block of the hearing that featured my presence can be downloaded here (it is in Dutch of course). Related to this, I also appeared on national television that evening (video here and below) in a long item in EénVandaag, a news background program broadcast nationwide at 6 pm. After the hearing, I also did a 20-minute live interview on national radio (audio here, below the video on that page).

It was quite an experience to be in this role, a role which I never had expected to have to play when I wrote my first blogpost on this all. I spent the better part of January doing research into even the most remotely possible questions I could imagine, digging up information, checking and re-checking facts, and writing the position paper.

The full hearing itself took 8 hours (I myself only attended some two hour of these though), and the block that included me took one hour (from 12:00 to 13:00 CET). I shared this block with Paul Riemens, who is the head of Dutch air traffic control; and prof. Piet van Genderen, who is a radar expert from Delft University.

Letter by the Minister

In the evening before the hearing, the Minister of Justice and Security, Van der Steur, had suddenly dispatched a letter to Parliament in answer to questions by Omtzigt , in which he stated that the prosecutor did receive radar and satellite data, and that in their perception there was "no need" for additional requests of those. He also mentioned that the prosecutor had insight in these data "through the MIVD"  (the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service) by means of "ambtsberichten" (i.e. brief statements on what the data show, not the data itself). The latter suggested to me, that the data are not declassified, and perhaps will not be declassified. Which is odd and unnecessary, as well as unwise, as I will discuss later in this blogpost.

The timing (combined with the fact that similar earlier questions by MP's Omtzigt and Sjoerdsma got unanswered) suggests that the Minister's letter to Parliament was a direct response to the position papers by Van Genderen and me, so it does seem our input into this discussion had some immediate effect.

Parliament members present

Parliament members attending the block of the hearing which I participated in, were Michiel Servaes (Labour party); Harry van Bommel (Socialist Party); Pieter Omtzigt (Christian Democrats); Louis Bontes (list Bontes/Van Klaveren, a right-wing splinter party split off from Wilders' Party for Freedom); Raymond de Roon (Party for Freedom); Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (Democrats '66); and Han ten Broeke (Party for Freedom and Liberty). Chairman of the hearing was MP Fred Teeven (Party for Freedom and Liberty: who incidentally was State Secretary at the Justice and Security department at the time of the MH17 tragedy), who is vice-chairman of the parliament committee in question.

some of the Parliament members during the hearing:
 f.l.t.r. Ten Broeke, Servaes, van Bommel and Omtzigt

Hearing proceedings and questions

Riemens, Van Genderen and me all three got a few minutes to present our information to the MP's. My main message to the committee was that there are a lot of military systems, from several countries including more than one ally of our country, that might provide useful information. I briefly outlined what kind of systems might provide what information, mentioning SBIRS, but also SIGINT and IMINT.

Next, the parliament members in the committee asked us further questions and clarifications. Servaes asked me which indications I had whether the Dutch prosecutor really needed more satellite data (harking back to the suggestions in the Minister's letter of the previous evening). Related to that, Van Bommel asked me whether my plea for an attempt to get these data and get them declassified was in the interest of transparency, or had some other additional goal. He also asked whether these data might help to further restrict the location from where the missile was fired or not. Ten Broeke asked me (and Van Genderen) for my opinion on the current government position in this.

answering questions

I amongst others answered that I was not a lawyer or attorney, but that it seemed to me that declassifying the evidence was crucial in order to be able to use them for a criminal prosecution, as well as indeed in the general interest of transparency and accountability. There are so many questions around this subject, and so many (conspiracy-) theories and different views (not to speak of desinformation floating around), that the final conclusions should be verifiable to all (after the hearing, I pointed out in the radio interview that it is also very important to the families of the victims to be able to judge these results, something also pointed out in the tv item by a father who lost his son in the tragedy).

In this context I also pointed to remarks made a year ago (17 Dec 2014) by Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of  European and Eurasian affairs in the US government, and read these out loud to the Parliament members. During a Q & A session at the American Enterprise Institute, Nuland answered questions by a Russian reporter and said that the US government had already shared data with the Netherlands, but moreover that she expected that there:

"..will be, I believe, in the context of the Dutch case, when they roll it out – they are likely to ask us to declassify some of that, and I think we will be able to help in that regard"

In other words: she not only expects a request for declassification from the Dutch government: but she also expects that the US Government will answer positively to that request!

During the hearing, and partly in response to some of the questions,  I warned the parliament members that if these satellite data would not be pursued and a request to declassify them not be made, this could possibly stimulate a lingering feeling that the Dutch prosecution left data unchecked or unreveiled. I told them that if things transpired this way (the wording of the letter by the Minister was not so encouraging in this respect) I feared that this would potentially provide handles to those parties with an interest in denying the conclusions of the investigation, to question these results.

Omtzigt asked me if there were earlier precedents of these kinds of data being declassified. There are: in the hearing I provided the examples of infrared data on meteoric fireballs (which these satellites also register) being released to astronomers for analysis; the declassification of satellite imagery in order to argue the necessity of the invasion of Iraq at the start of the second Gulf War; and China providing satellite imagery of potential floating debris in the case of the search for the missing MH370 aircraft.

Sjoerdsma asked me whether, in case the data would be declassified and supplied, our country had the expertise to independently analyse them and verify the claims made from them. For the infrared data I answered that I am not sure, so could answer neither positively nor negatively. For IMINT and SIGINT, our country certainly has that expertise, both within our own military as well as on Dutch universities.

De Roon wanted me to clarify further which countries had what satellite systems. Bontes asked me whether the fact that we were now so reliant on foreign data from foreign systems, might be an argument to start to build, as a country, surveillance satellite capacity ourselves (I think I am really not the person to answer that question).

During my answering all these questions, van Bommel additionally asked me in what phase of the criminal investigation these data should be made public, and whether it was perhaps too early for that in the current phase.

To the latter I can agree, although (again) I am no lawyer or attorney. But I can understand that perhaps, in this phase of the inquiry, the prosecutors do not want to publicly show their hand of cards.

I do have some concern though, about whether at the end of the trajectory these data are going to be made public, in the interest of verifiability. In my opinion, they should. I find the wording of the letter by the Minister of 21 January 2016 however not very promising in that respect.

The  contributions by the other invited experts contained some significant points. Van Genderen for example made very clear that having the secondary radar data is not enough. He also made very clear that Ukrainian claims that all their radar systems were down for maintenance that day, are hard to believe, as that is against what is normal. Riemens made clear that normally, the air traffic controller on duty will be heard in the investigation (which has not happened in this case) and that radar data normally are available within an hour. Later during the hearing, well-known lawyer Knoops made very clear that without the original raw (radar, satellite) data being available, the prosecution would have no leg to stand on.

SIGINT, IMINT and MH17

(this post continues discussions in earlier posts on possible classified space-based observations of the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the Ukraine in 2014)

My position paper written for the Dutch Parliament Foreign Affairs committee hearing of Jan 22 (see my previous post) has a strong focus on infra-red detections of a missile by SBIRS. There are however a few other relevant aspects of Space Based observations in connection to the MH17 disaster that I could not cover in the space available to me for that paper.

In this post, I will provide some brief additional information about:

1) potential roles for IMINT satellites;
2) the positions of SIGINT satellites.


Optical and radar IMINT

1. optical IMINT

Both (unclassified) commercial and (classified) military satellite systems for high-resolution optical imagery (Image Intelligence, IMINT) exist, and both sources will be discussed below.

Optical and radar imagery obtained in the hours before, as well as during the event, might be used to look for missile systems, both on the Ukrainian as well as separatist sides of the front, in a wide circle around the site of the shootdown. It could also be used to verify the reconstruction of the purported movements of a Russian BUK system published by citizen journalist team Bellingcat, a study which is not uncontested. The Bellingcat team places the BUK in certain places at certain times, and if space-based imagery (either military or commercial) for those locations and times exist they could perhaps verify these claims.

The US military has one classified system of optical satellites with a (much-) better-than-1-meter capability: the KH-11 IMPROVED CRYSTAL/Evolved Enhanced CRYSTAL (aka 'Keyhole' or 'KENNAN') which reportedly (and theoretically, from known 2.4 meter mirror size specs) have a resolution in the order of  10-20 cm.

Mid-2014 this system consisted of four satellites: USA 161, USA 186, USA 224 and USA 245. All of these have been discussed on this blog before and are tracked by our amateur network.

We have accurate tracking data on three of these, USA 161, USA 224 and USA 245 for the days around 17 July 2014 and hence can pinpoint when these potentially had the crash area in their sight to better than a minute. For USA 186, which was actively manoeuvering around that time and for which we have a gap in our coverage form June to August 2014, pass times are a bit less certain and constrained to about 20-30 minutes accuracy.

First, we can positively affirm that one of the KH-11, USA 161 (2001-044A) actually had the Ukraine in its potential view during the incident at 13:20 UT:

click images to enlarge

Please note well: this does however NOT mean that USA 161 delivered imagery of the event. A number of factors should be taken into account:

1. the cloud cover at that moment, which might hinder imagery;
2. the crash site is located quite in the perifery of the satellites footprint area;
3. these satellites do likely not make images continuously, but only if commanded to do so, for specific areas of interest;
4. there is the question of whether USA 161 was still operational at that time. It was the oldest of the on-orbit KH-11, being launched 14 years earlier. Only a few months later it was de-orbitted, so it was clearly at the end of its lifetime.

In addition to their KH-11 system, the US military hires space on commercial high resolution optical IMINT satellites from the US commercial firm Digitalglobe (the same firm that supplies Google Earth with satellite imagery).  

Digitalglobe operates a number of satellites with a better-than-1-meter capability: Geoeye-1 (0.4 meter resolution), and Worldview 1, 2 and 3 (0.25-0.50 meter resolution). Most of the satellite imagery that the US Department of Defense supplies to the press (when briefing on the military situation in e.g. North Korea, Syria and Libya) comes from these commercial satellites.

Imagery from these same Digitalglobe satellites is also available commercially, to any interested party with money. And in addition to DigitalGlobe, the European company Airbus Defense and Space also offers commercial high-resolution optical imagery from its SPOT and Pléiades satellites. Pléiades 1A and 1B offer a 0.5 meter resolution. SPOT 5 and 6 offer a 2.5-1.5 meter resolution.

Accurate orbital data from non-classified sources are available for all the commercial imagers for 17 July 2014. The satellites in question made several daylight passes over the area in the morning of July 17, 2014, between 8:00 and 10:00 GMT, i.e. during the 3 to 5 hours before the shootdown, a period when the skies were still less clouded.

This does not mean that they necessarily made imagery of course. Yet any imagery these commercial Digitalglobe and Airbus satellites did make on July 16, 17 and 18 have the advantage that they are not "classified", unlike the US military data, meaning that they could be used and published without diplomatic problems by the Dutch government in the Dutch criminal investigation into the disaster.

I would therefore expect the Dutch OM to either buy or subpoena all potential Digitalglobe and Airbus imagery from these dates. They can be used to reconstruct missile system positions in the area (both on the Ukrainian, the separatist and Russian sides) within range of the shootdown location, and they can be used to hunt for missile transports (see my earlier remarks about the Bellingcat claims). The Dutch Air Force has an imagery analysis unit that is well suited to help with such an analysis. Including imagery from the days before and after the incident as well is useful to look for differences between imagery of these respective dates.


2. Radar IMINT

The US military has two systems for high resolution radar IMINT: the Lacrosse (ONYX) system of which currently only one satellite, Lacrosse 5 (2005-016A) is left on-orbit, and the radar component of the Future Imagery Architecture (known as TOPAZ), consisting of three satellites: FIA Radar 1, 2 and 3 (2010-046A, 2012-014A and 2013-072A). These systems should be capable of providing imagery with sub-meter resolutions, and like optical imagery, they can be used to look for the presence of missile systems in the area. They have the added bonus that they are not hampered by cloud cover, unlike optical imagery.

Apart from the USA, the German military also operates a radar satellite system, the SAR-Lupe satellites. The French military likewise operates its own radar satellite system, the Hélios system. Japan operates the IGS system (which includes both optical and radar satellite versions).

All of these satellites made passes over the Ukraine at one time or another on July 17 2014, so all of them might have provided useful imagery.  FIA Radar 3 made a pass right over the area in question near 11:43 UT for example, some 1.5 hours before the tragedy. FIA Radar 2 made a pass over the area at 18:00 UT, 4.5 hours after the shootdown. These are just a few examples.

Given what was happening in the area around this time, and the strong concern of NATO and the EU about this, it is almost certain that imagery of the area was collected by these US, German and French satellite systems.


SIGINT

My position paper briefly mentions that a number of countries have space-based SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) capacities. This does not only concern capacities for (for example) the NSA to tap into your cellphone and satellite telephone conversations: another important strategic aspect of space-based SIGINT is the capacity to detect radar and telemetry signals from enemy weapons systems. Such detections allow identification of the used weapons system (each system has its own 'signature'). They also allow, according to remarks by the then NRO director Bruce Carlson in a speech from September 2010 at the National Space Symposium, geolocation of the source of this radar signal (in the case of MH17: geolocation of the Target Acquisition Radar of the launch unit).

The US military has a number of SIGINT systems in several types of orbits: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) below 1500 km which allows coverage of a few minutes during a pass over a target; and Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) and geosynchronous orbit (GEO), which allow to monitor targets for many hours (HEO) to continuously (GEO) from distances of 36 000+ km.

France has a number of SIGINT satellites in LEO. China no doubt has SIGINT satellites too, as does Russia. For the moment I will focus on the US systems. I must ad that I did check the French systems as well but none of the French systems (ESSAIM and Elisa, both in LEO) had sight of the Ukraine at that time.

The US systems, under the catch-all codename ORION, include the TRUMPET-FO which move in HEO. One of them is USA 184, mentioned before in the discussion of SBIRS as it has a piggyback SBIRS capacity in addition to its main SIGINT role.

There are also the big MENTOR satellites in GEO, plus two MERCURY satellites also in GEO, and the older VORTEX system. Of these systems, TRUMPET-FO, MENTOR and MERCURY are certainly still active based on their orbital behaviour.

The map below shows the positions of those satellites in this series for which we have enough tracking data to allow a reconstruction of their positions and footprints on 17 July 2014, 13:20 UT and which had the MH17 crash area within potential view:

click map to enlarge

Again: this does NOT necessarily mean that all of these satellites were actively monitoring the Ukraine at that time. Quite a number of them will have been tasked on the Middle East.

Yet, given the strong NATO interest in events in the Ukraine at that time, notably the rising concern about advanced surface-to-air missile systems following the shootdown of a Ukrainian Antonov-26 a few days earlier, I would be surprised if none of them monitored the Ukraine at all.


A clarification note on the position of USA 184 (SIGINT/SBIRS)

In my position paper written for the Dutch Parliament Foreign Affairs committee meeting coming Friday, I included this map with the positions of three SBIRS satellites with view on the Ukraine at that time:

click map to enlarge

I should point out here that there is some leeway in the exact position of USA 184, depending on whether it made a corrective manoeuvre to maintain its Mean Motion of about 2.00615 revolutions/day or not since the day we last observed it.

If it did, its position would be slightly more westward compared to the position depicted above, i.e. in a position just north of Scotland rather than above the Norwegian coast:

Let me be clear: this does NOT influence the conclusions of my position paper: the MH17 crash site in both variants is well within the field of view as seen from USA 184, i.e. the satellite could potentially provide both Infra-red and SIGINT detections. In the interest of accuracy, I thought I should however mention it here.


Acknowledgement -  I thank Mike McCants (USA) and Ted Molczan (Canada) for discussions about satellite positions, notably concerning USA 184.

Parliament hearing MH17, 22 Januari 2016

On 22 January 2016, the permanent committee on Foreign Affairs of Dutch Parliament will hold a full day of hearings/round table talks related to the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014. The hearings are in preparation for a debate about the Dutch Government's reactions to and actions with regard to the ongoing investigations into the disaster.

On the invitation of MP Pieter Omtzigt, I have been invited as an external expert to this hearing. The committee members want to get informed regarding the possibility of foreign (notably US) Space-Based military observations of the event, i.e. satellite observations by systems such as SBIRS. This is a topic I have covered earlier on this blog.

The agenda of the hearing (in Dutch) is here. On request of the committee, I have written a brief position paper on the topic (again: in Dutch) which can be found here.

Video of the hearing will be live-streamed through this link. My contribution is scheduled for 12:00-13:00 CET (11:00-12:00 GMT).

In Memoriam: Pierre Neirinck, 16 Aug 1926 - 3 Jan 2016

Pierre Neirinck, 1926 - 2016 
(image taken by Daniel Karcher in 1992)

It is with much sadness that I write this memorial post. Yesterday, I was informed that Pierre Neirinck passed away last Sunday at the age of 89.

Pierre was a big name in our field and the nestor of our satellite tracking community. He was one of the very first amateurs to do serious positional observations on satellites, at the very dawn of the Space Age. Below are photographs which Pierre made at Malo-les-Bains, France, of a pass of Sputnik 2 on 13 April 1958, and of a pass of the Sputnik 3 rocket on 7 July 1958.  A positional observation of Sputnik 3 by Pierre done in 1959 can be seen here, courtesy of Ted Molczan.

Sputnik 2 (the one with Laika) imaged by Pierre Neirinck in 1958 just before re-entry

Sputnik 3 rocket over Malo-les-Bains imaged by Pierre Neirinck in July 1958

Before the Space Age started, Pierre studied the relationship between weather and solar activity and observed meteors, accompanied by his black cat Mickey "who mewed each time a meteor cross the sky" (private comm., 30-10-2012). His love of cats was something Pierre shared with a number of satellite observers.

Born in France in 1926, Pierre got the opportunity to turn his hobby into a professional job at the Satellite Orbits Group in Great-Britain from 1966 to 1982, where he was the driving motor behind the satellite prediction service at the Radio and Space Research Station (RSRS - in 1974 renamed to Appleton Laborotary) in Ditton Park, Slough. In this capacity he conducted orbital analysis and provided pass predictions to observers, as well as doing observations himself. He is explicitly mentioned in the memoirs of Desmond King-Hele ('A Tapestry of Orbits', Cambridge University Press, 1992), a renowned British satellite scientist at the RAE who greatly benefitted from the data flow generated by Pierre's activation of the amateur tracking network. His comments capture Pierre's extraordinary 24-hour passion and zeal for his work, remarking at a point that Pierre sometimes seemed to be two persons: "Pierre by day and Pierre by night" (King-Hele 1992, p. 138).

Pierre Neirinck (by day) at the RSRS Satellite Orbits Group in April 1971 (photo Tahsin Vudali)

After his early retirement in 1982 (due to a reorganization of the British governments' satellite tracking establishments), Pierre went back to Malo-les-Bains in the north of his native France.

This did not mean he stopped his activities: until very recently he still actively tracked satellites and analysed orbits, sometimes going as far as climbing on ladders to glimpse a low Keyhole pass over the rooftops, even when he was already well in his eighties. Moreover, behind the scenes he remained a central figure in the vitalization and coordination of amateur satellite positional observations, right up to just weeks before his death. He distributed COSPAR site codes to new observers and new observing locations (the last one he issued was for site 2752 on December 21, 2015, just two weeks before his death). He also distributed orbital analysis based on his own observations and the data we provided. Only the last two years or so, his declining health started to interfere and he was forced to stop active observing.

Active satellite observers, including me, until very recently received his charmingly idiosyncratic semi-daily e-mail dispatches (before my time, these were photo-copied notes distributed via surface post and fax - one of those is featured in Bob Christy's in memoriam for Pierre here). These e-mail dispatches featured his observations and orbital analysis (notably of the KH-11 'Keyhole' satellites), which were mostly done on an ancient Commodore computer, sometimes a note on his health or activities, old memories (often about WW II) as well as frequent brief ironic comments on world affairs, including geopolitics, sports (tennis notably), natural disasters, crimes in the news, scientific discoveries, and often presenting a brief tally of who had left our planet in violent ways the previous days. In private e-mails, he used to reminiscence about the squirrels and dragonflies at his old workplace in Ditton Park, and the sparrow visiting his window at Malo-les-Bains every morning.

Pierre was an enthusiastic and talented photographer, and his photographs sometimes featured in exhibits ( I regret that I can no longer find his fantastic self-portrait, called "auto-portrait", capturing himself in an automobile side mirror, which he once sent me).

Together with Ted Molczan, Pierre provided me with much encouragement when I started to seriously track satellites in 2005. In recognition of this, it was my immense pleasure to be able to have the IAU name one of my asteroid discoveries after him in 2008, asteroid (142014) Neirinck (see my blog post here). In response, he quipped about "his" asteroid that:

"I am glad that the Neirinck asteroid orbit has no chance to intercect [sic] the Earth in the near future. Otherwise,I would be potential Space criminal. My next problem is to plant 4 flags on it: French, British (because Satellite Orbits Group), US and Dutch flags." (e-mail 18 Nov 2008)

Pierre's contributions were deservedly recognized. In 2005, he received the Prix Jacquemetton d'Astronomie from the Société Astronomique de France. In November 2008 the French Academie Nationale de l'Air et de l'Espace awarded him a Bronze Medal for "his life’s work devoted to space observation". That same month, the International Astronomical Union on my initiative named asteroid (142014) Neirinck in his honour, as was already mentioned above.

Over the years, developments in Pierre's health frequently worried us, but he always recovered. We used to think he would live forever. With some Dutch/Belgian observers we were actually making plans to visit him at Malo-les-Bains one of these days. Alas, it will not be.

The satellite observers community will miss him, and remember him as one of the Great ones.

Rest in Peace, Pierre.

(information in this post is based on information provided by Bob Christy in his in memoriam here; by Ted Molczan in his in memoriam here; on e-mails from and private communications with Pierre over 2005-2015; and on King-Hele's book 'A Tapestry of Orbits'. The photographs of and by Pierre were all sent to me at some point by Pierre himself)

Something (a fuel leak?) happened to the Chang'e 3 booster (2013-070B) late September-early October

Over the past year I have frequently reported on my observations of very distant space junk: objects orbiting at trans-Lunar distance. One of these objects, 2013-070B, the CZ-3C upper stage of the Chinese Chang'e 3 Lunar mission from 2013, is now showing something interesting.

flash cycle of 2013-070B on 11 Sep 2015 (click to enlarge). Stack of multiple images

2013-070B is tumbling and shows a very slow flash cycle (see various previous posts). Observations during the summer months of 2015, up to 14 September 2015, suggested a stable flash period of  about 423 seconds.

But somewhere between mid-September and late October 2015, things have changed. The first indication was from this fine series of data points which Krisztián Sárneczky obtained for me on 24 October 2015, using the 0.6-m Schmidt telescope of MPC 461 (Piszkéstető station of Konkoly Observatory, Hungary):

click diagram to enlarge

The flash period had suddenly dropped, to 384 seconds on 24 October 2015, and has further dropped to 364 seconds on 6 December 2015, based on a series of images I obtained with the help of Peter Starr from Warrumbungle Observatory (MPC Q65) in Australia.

2010-013B 2013-070B is hence suddenly tumbling at a faster speed than it used to do. The value is still dropping further, but the drop appears to be slowing down, as can be seen in the diagram below:

click to enlarge diagram

Such a sudden drop from a stable flash period to a shorter flash period can have a number of causes. A close approach to the Moon can result in a tumble periodicity change: but 2013-070B did not experience such a close approach during the relevant weeks, so that is not an explanation. The most likely explanation is that the booster developed a fuel leak.

Rocket stages always contain some remnant fuel in their tanks. Rocket fuel is often quite corrosive and slowly eats its way through the metal of the tank and booster. In addition, a meteoroid impact can puncture the rocket stage and tanks. When one of these two things happen, fuel vapor escapes from the rocket stage, and acts as a mini rocket engine, giving the object some extra momentum. This can either speed up or slow down he tumbling speed of the object.

We have seen this happen a number of times with rocket stages in Low Earth Orbit as well, and there is no reason why this could not happen to a rocket stage in a trans-Lunar orbit.

Imaging Geostationary satellites, and PAN's past relocations

Last week saw some clear evenings, and I used one of them to image some geostationary satellites. It concerned "the usual suspects": MENTOR's, MERCURY's and the enigmatic, probably SIGINT satellite PAN (2009-047A). The latter satellite has not been moved for quite a while now: since the end of 2013 it is at longitude 47.7 E, parked close to a number of commercial comsats. In the past it was frequently relocated, taking positions next to various commercial COMSATS. In four years time between 2009-2013, it moved at least 9 times (which is a lot) to various longitudes between 33 E and 52.5 E.

PAN amidst several commercial COMSATS on 9 December 2015 (click to enlarge)

The diagram below charts these frequent movements of PAN. Relocations typically took place about once every 6 months. Late 2013, they stopped. PAN however must still be operational, as active station-keeping is necessary for it to stay at 47.7 E.

relocations of PAN over time, 2009-2015 (click to enlarge)

Four other SIGINT satellites and a military comsat were imaged as well: Mentor 4 (2009-001A) and Mentor 6 (2012-034A), Mercury 1 (1994-054A) and Mercury 2 (1996-026A), and the military comsat Milstar 5 (2002-001A).

Mentor 4, next to commercial comsat Thuraya 2 on 9 Dec 2015 (click to enlarge)

Mentor 6 and a number of commercial satellites, close to the Orion nebula, on 9 Dec 2015

Using the remote telescope at Warrumbungle (MPC Q65) in Australia, I recently (4 December 2015) also checked-up on the recently launched US Navy COMSAT MUOS 4 (2015-044A). It is still at its check-out location over the Pacific at longitude 172 W, but some recent press statements suggest check-out has been successfully completed, and it will be moved to its operational position at longitude 75 E near India in the spring of 2016.

Small unusual artificial object WT1190F will impact in a few hours [UPDATED with imagery of actual impact]

click image to enlarge

(for an update with imagery of the actual impact of this object from a research plane, see bottom of post)

The animated GIF above was made from images which I took just a few hours ago with the 0.61-m Cassegrain telescope of MPC G68 Sierra Stars Observatory in Markleeville, California.

The moving object is WT1190F, discovered on October 3 this year by the Catalina Sky Survey. This small peculiar object will impact in a few hours from now (near 6:18 UT, Friday 13 November 2015) just south of Sri Lanka.

It is an unusual object that is not a Near Earth Asteroid but almost certainly a small (1-2 meter) artificial object. It is moving in the Earth-Moon system (i.e. in a very elliptic orbit around earth) and its orbit is under influence of Solar Radiation Pressure, which shows that it is very light weight for its size. This fact, and the geocentric rather than Heliocentric orbit with apogee at twice the distance to the Moon, suggests it is some piece of hardware from a past Lunar mission.

image credit: Bill Gray, Project Pluto

It is not clear from which Lunar mission this object is a relic: it could be from one of the American missions, but also Russian or Chinese. The object in question turns out to have been sporadically observed since 2009, as it is probably the same object earlier designated 9U01FF6 in 2009 and UDA34A3 and UW8551D in 2013.

Shortly after its (re-) discovery on October 3, Bill Gray noted that the orbit yielded impact solutions on November 13 near 6:18 UT. The predicted impact point is over the Indian Ocean, just south of Sri Lanka. Bill Gray has put up a FAQ for this object with maps of the orbit and impact location here.

image credit: Bill Gray, project Pluto

As this is a small, 1-2 meter sized and lightweight object, the impact is harmless. It will burn up in the atmosphere and likely nothing will reach the water surface. It provides scientists with a good opportunity though to observe what happens during a small asteroid impact, as the speed and entry angle of this object is quite similar (see also the project page here).

The astrometry obtained from my images makes, along with data by many other observers, a modest contribution to  establishing the impact point and time as good as possible.

1st UPDATE, 13 Nov 2015, 09 UT:  WT1190F is now toast for a few hours. South Sri Lanka seems to have been clouded out, but there are reports on Twitter of sonic booms from the re-entry heard in Sri Lanka. 

In response to some of the comments, I want to point out that WT1190F is/was not the only artificial object in a trans-Lunar orbit which we were/are tracking. Here you can find an earlier post (out of several) on tracking 2010-050B and 2013-070B, two rocket boosters in trans-Lunar orbits from the Chinese Chang'e 2 and Chang'e 3 Lunar missions.

2nd UPDATE,  13 Nov 2015, 13 UT:  The first imagery (below, three stills and the video) has just appeared of the actual impact near Sri Lanka, shot from a research aircraft organized by IAC / UAE Space Agency / NASA / ESA:

Flight MH17, satellite data and yesterday's hearing of Dutch Parliament with the Dutch Safety Board

Yesterday I posted (in the context of what appears to refer to SBIRS detections of the recent aircraft crash in the Sinai) on lingering questions with regard to potential US military satellite data on the shootdown of flight MH17 over east Ukraine in July 2014. I blogged about this a year ago too.

Yesterdays recapitulation was timely in many ways, as yesterday afternoon saw a special hearing between Dutch Parliament members and the Dutch Safety Board (DSB), the agency which investigated the tragedy. The latter published its report on their finding in October, leading to yesterday's special Parliament hearing. Several Dutch MP's questioned the DSB representatives about what they perceive as ambiguities and missing information in the report. Among them, potential satellite data.

Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt especially focussed  on potential US military satellite data (including SBIRS data) in his questions, partially basing his information on this very blog. For those of you who understand Dutch, the most relevant of his questions pertaining to satellite data start at 10:30 in the video snippet at this link.

The answers by the DSB representatives were interesting: they seem to indicate that there are indeed satellite data, although it was not entirely clear what satellite data they were talking about: SBIRS IR detections of the missile launch and ascend trajectory, or KH-11 optical imagery of the relevant parts of the Ukraine before and after the shootdown. Their answers also seem to indicate that DSB members were given access to these data, but cannot publicly report on it because "State Secret"...

For truth finding, these data are extremely important. They are likely much less ambiguous than the reconstructions from the missile impact damage to the aircraft on which the DSB report is basing the reconstructed launch location of the missile. As a Dutch citizen, the country that lost 198 citizens in the tragedy, I sincerely hope that the US government does the right thing and will eventually release enough of these data to confirm where the missile that killed so many innocent men, women and children was launched from. That would be the only ethical and humane thing to do. In a democracy, especially where truth finding is concerned, some things are more important than upholding secrecy, certainly in connection to such a terrible tragedy as this involving the killing of such a large number of citizens of a long time US ally.

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.

click image to enlarge

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).

click images to enlarge

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.

OT - on Dutch TV about the close approach of asteroid 2015 TB145 ("Spooky")

Yesterday evening (29 Oct 2015) I was a guest in the Live broadcast TV show "Z Today" by Dutch commercial broadcaster RTL Z.

Topic was the close approach of the 200-600 meter large asteroid  2015 TB145 (with the unofficial nickname "Spooky") which comes to within 1.25 Lunar Distances on 31 October 2015. The item is 8 minutes (and in Dutch, of course).

Embedding the video in this post won't work for some odd reason, but here is a link to it.

Chasing the new NOSS 3-7 pair (the NROL-55 payloads)

NOSS 3-7 (NROL-55) payloads on 2015 October 10, two days after launch
Click image to enlarge

On October 8th 2015, an Atlas V rocket launched the National Reconnaissance Office's NROL-55 mission from Vandenberg AFB. The mission consisted of two NRO payloads and a number of cubesats hitching a ride. The two NRO payloads (of which only one is acknowledged, the other being catalogued as 'debris', which it isn't) are a new NOSS pair, NOSS 3-7, which replaces the 10-year-old NOSS 3-3 duo (2005-004A and C).

NOSS (Naval Ocean Surveillance System) satellites operate in pairs, flying in close formation. They geolocate ships by radio interferometry observations of the ship's radio and radar signals.

Based on the launch direction and rocket used, as well as the few details published, we knew it would be a new NOSS duo, and from previous launches had an idea in what orbit they would be launched and what manoeuvering sequence would be used.

The first observations of the newly launched objects were made within a few hours after the launch, by several observers. About 1.5 hours after the launch, observers in Iran and Tibet witnessed a spectacular fuel vent by the Centaur rocket from the launch. Next a number of satellite trackers in our network observed the payloads and the Centaur rocket (e.g. here, here, and here).

I was clouded out on Oct 8. I could join in the chase and got my first look at the payloads only on the next evening on the 9th, but under poor conditions (very hazy) with the objects only marginally showing up on my imagery made with a 2.5/50 mm lens.

NOSS 3-7 (NROL-55) Centaur near Altair on 2015 October 10
Click image to enlarge

The next night, on the 10th, the sky was very clear, and I employed the 1.4/85mm lens rather than the 2.5/50mm lens. First, I imaged a pass of the Centaur rocket near 19:47 UT (image above). As is usual for the Centaur boosters from these launches, it was clearly variable in brightness due to tumbling. This can be clearly seen in the image below, a stack of five images:

NOSS 3-7 (NROL-55) Centaur, stack of 5 images showing brightness variation
Click image to enlarge

Next I observed the two payloads closely chasing each other near 19:55 UT. Like the previous evening, the leading object was clearly fainter than the following object (movement is from top to bottom in the image below, showing the two payloads crossing a part of Cassiopeia).

NOSS 3-7 (NROL-55) payloads on 2015 October 10, two days after launch
Click image to enlarge

NOSS pairs operate for about 10 years, each pair maintaining a close spatial proximity configuration of parallel orbits with one satellite just leading the other. After 10 years their mission is over and the pair loses their close spatial proximity. From previous patterns, Ted Molczan expects that the NOSS pair that is being replaced by this new launch (NOSS 3-3, 2005-004 A and C, launched in 2005) will end its mission and lose their close spatial proximity about 7-8 months from now, i.e. around April-May 2016.

click image to enlarge

The newly launched NOSS 3-7 duo is not yet at its operational orbit in its operational configuration. Based on past missions, they will continue to manoeuver the next few weeks until they reach their operational orbits (after which a check-out period will follow). This manoeuvering makes them interesting targets to follow the coming few weeks.

The image at the top of this post shows the pair of payloads (moving top to bottom through Cassiopeia in the image), with the leading object being slightly fainter than the trailing object. This is a pattern also seen with previous launches: once operational, both payloads will however be of similar brightness.

[UPDATED] Imaging North-Korea's Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 (KMS 3-2) satellite

Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 (KMS 3-2) passing Deneb, evening of 10 Oct 2015
click image to enlarge

UPDATE (11 Oct 2015):
I imaged Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 again the next evening (image above), 10 Oct 2015 near 18:32 UT, when it passed the bright star Deneb (brightest star in image). This time I used the Zeiss Sonnar MC 2.8/180mm lens, which shows fainter objects but has an even smaller FOV. The trail is faint but shows up well (click the image to enlarge).

Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 (KMS 3-2), evening of 9 Oct 2015
click image to enlarge

[original post before update:] Yesterday evening started clear. While my targets for that evening were the payloads of the NROL-55 launch from October 8 (more on that in a later post), I took the opportunity to image a pass of North-Korea's satellite Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 (KMS 3-2) in the early part of the evening. The image above shows it, as a very faint trail.

Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 (2012-072A) makes favourable passes in early autumn and in spring. In October it is making evening passes. Yesterday I had a very good illuminated pass near 20:50 local time (18:50 UT).

By coincidence my imaging of KMS 3-2 yesterday happened on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Worker’s Party of Korea. There were rumours of a pending new N-Korean satellite launch, perhaps with a stronger rocket, on or near that date, although at least one assessment of satellite imagery by the 38 North blog, suggests the new launch platform at Sohae, which North-Korea has been building the past year, is far from ready yet.

KMS 3-2 is a difficult object to photograph, as it is very faint: it is a cube of only about 1.0 x 0.75 meter in size. It is also tumbling. This makes it a challenge: it is in a Low Earth Orbit and moving relatively fast, but a  lens which is fast enough to capture it during it's brief brightness peaks has a limited FOV. In practise, my f1.4/85mm lens can just show it during the brightest part of it's periodic brightness variability, but it is a gamble whether that happens in the FOV or not. So far I had managed to image it once before, a year ago.

Yesterday evening, I was lucky again: during a nice high late twilight pass with the the satellite culminating at an elevation of 60 degrees in the W-SW, it did reach peak brightness in the FOV of my lens, resulting in four images showing it. The best of these is shown above.

click image to enlarge

Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 was launched three years ago, on 12 December 2012. It was the first successful launch by North-Korea, in the sense that the payload reached orbit. Whether the payload is operational (as PyongYang claimed), is another question. It's brightness behaviour shows it is tumbling, which is something an operational Earth Reconnaissance satellite should not do.

At the time, I did an analysis of the launch-window. It appeared to have been very carefully choosen to avoid coverage of the launch site (and specifically last-minute launch preparations) by Western reconnaissance satellites in the hour before the launch. Interestingly, North-Korea tried to find orbital elements for such Western reconnaissance satellites by looking on this very weblog.

OT - the Lunar Eclipse of 28 September 2015 from Leiden

click image to enlarge

Leiden had clear skies during the night of September 27-28, which meant a good view of the total Lunar Eclipse in the early morning of September 28.

For me, this eclipse occurred mostly at rooftop level, with the moon sinking from 34 degrees elevation at first contact with the umbra, to 11 degrees elevation at last contact with the umbra. During mid-totality, at 2:47 UT (4:47 am local time), the moon was at 21 degrees elevation, just disappearing behind the rooftops for me.

After setting up my Celestron C6, I could use the telescope until about 2:40 UT, when the moon disappeared behind the rooftops. I then went to my girlfriend's appartment, which (from the 2nd floor) has a good view Westwards, and continued photography with simpler means during the second half of the eclipse.

click image to enlarge: it is worth it!  See text for details

There I shot a series of images with the Canon EOS 60D and the EF 2.5/50 mm Macro lens on a tripod. 14 of these images, shot in 5-minute intervals, where then stacked to create the image above, which shows the second half of the eclipse from 03:15 UT to 04:20 UT, i.e. from late totality until just before last contact with the umbra. The lens was set at F5, camera on 250 ISO, and exposure times were 4 seconds at the start of the series, and 0.5 seconds at the end. It shows that you don't need a telescope to get nice pictures.

Of course, a telescope does allow for very fine pictures. Below are some results from the first half of the eclipse, taken with my Canon EOS 60D through my Celestron C6 (15 cm F/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain with F6.3 focal reducer):

Moon in penumbra, 01:04 UT, just before first contact with umbra
(1/200 second, 100 ISO) click image to enlarge

Entry in umbra progressing (1/50 second, 100 ISO), 01:30 UT
click image to enlarge

Four minutes before totality (3.2 seconds, 200 ISO), 02:06 UT
click image to enlarge

Totality, 02:32 UT (10 seconds, 800 ISO). Note two stars near top lunar disc
click image to enlarge

This was a rather dark eclipse, to my estimate at the edge of L1/L2 on the Danjon Scale. The best moment for me was just before totality, when the moon sat just above the roof as a dark red-purple globe with a bright crescent on the lower edge: it looked a bit like Mars with a polar cap this way.

And by the way: NO! I refuse to go along with that "Super Blood Moon" nonsense. Puh-Lease!!!!

The "Blood Moon" denomer is actually of very questionable origin. It is not (contrary to what some people seem to think) an old folkloristic name for a Lunar eclipse, but is a denomer coined only a few years ago by two American Christian religious doomsday fanatics, who prophecied that the tetrad (series of four lunar eclipses each six months apart) starting with the eclipse of April 15, 2014 and ending with this eclipse of September 28, 2015, were a sign of the End of Times being near. They got their inspiration for this name from a sentence in the Bible, in the Book of Revelations.

Unfortunately, it seems everything in our modern society has to be expressed in ridiculous hyperbole nowadays. Ad to that media ignorant of the origin of the denomer "Blood Moon" with some religious crackpots, and you end up with horrible abominations like "Super Blood Moon" for what in essence was a nice and impressive, but in itself not particularly distinctive or rare Lunar eclipse...

MUOS 4 at its 172 W check-out location

MiTEx 1 on 16 September 2015
(click image to enlarge)

On September 16, I was using the Warrumbungle 0.51-m telescope in Australia to track MiTEx. Indeed, MiTEx 1 (2006-024A) was imaged as a faint object close to the expected location (image above).

But about 5 degrees Northeast of MiTEx 1, I imaged another, very bright object (see image below) at approximately 172 W. It was too bright to be MiTEx 2 and didn't fit any known object. This UNID turned out to be the newly launched classified military COMSAT, MUOS 4 (2015-044A).

MUOS 4 on 16 September 2015
(click image to enlarge)

MUOS 4 was launched from Cape Canaveral with an Atlas V rocket two weeks earlier, on 2 September 2015. It is the fourth satellite in the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) system of Geosynchronous narrowband communication satellites, the first of which was launched in 2012. This system of military COMSAT is to provide communication facilities to 'mobile users': i.e. military personel in non-fixed positions such as ships, aircraft, tanks and vehicles or on foot. It is a replacement for the aging UFO constellation of COMSAT.

The MUOS system is to consist of four operational satellites and one spare fifth satellite. According to a publication by Oeting et al. in the Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest 30:2 of 2011, the operational satellites will be placed in slots at longitudes:

15.5 W
100 W
177 W
75 E

...while the spare satellite (MUOS 5, to be launched) will be placed at longitude 72 E. Compare this to the actual locations of the MUOS satellites according to our tracking:

MUOS constellation, from Oeting et al. 2011
(click image to enlarge)

Current locations of MUOS satellites,
based on amateur tracking:
------------------------------------------
MUOS 1   2012-09A       177 W  Pacific
MUOS 2   2013-036A      100 W  CONUS
MUOS 3   2015-002A     15.8 W  Atlantic
MUOS 4   2015-044A      172 W  (check-out)
------------------------------------------

(click map to enlarge)

The map and table above show the current locations of MUOS 1, 2 and 3 (from Mike McCant's INTTLES file). The positions agree well with the slots depicted in the mentioned publication.

(and yeah: if you think it is a tad silly that these orbits are 'classified' while the intended orbit slots have been published in a publicly available publication, you are of course right).

The yellow dots in the map are ground facilities related to the MUOS system. The MUOS constellation is designed such that each satellite has at least two Radio Acces Facilities (RAF) in range.

MUOS 4 imaged on 24 September 2015

My additional observations on September 24 (see image above) show that MUOS 4 is stationary at 172 W, as depicted in the map below. An approximate orbit for the satellite can be found here.

(click map to enlarge)

As MUOS 4 appears intended for an operational slot at longitude 75 E over the Indian Ocean (red dot in the map above), this means the current location at 172 W is not the intended operational longitude. Rather, it is a temporary initial check-out location. Once check-out is completed (and this might take several weeks), it will probably be moved to longitude 75 E.

(click images to enlarge)

This check-out position at 172 W has been used for the MUOS satellites before, according to Ted Molczan (priv.com). It is in range of three MUOS ground facilities: two Radio Acces Facilities (RAF) at Wahiawa in Hawaii and (although barely) Geraldton in Australia, and the primary Satellite Control Facility (SCF) in Pt. Mugu, California.