Cheerful or not

Those magnificent spooks and their spying machine: The spies help rescue Skylab || The Space Review

On May 14, 1973, NASA launched the Skylab Orbital Workshop atop its last Saturn V. During liftoff the workshop’s meteoroid shield broke loose and ripped off one of its two main solar panels. The problems were immediately apparent to NASA technicians monitoring the launch. Telemetry went bad soon after the ignition of the mighty Saturn’s second stage, and ground-based radars detected multiple pieces of debris coming off of the station. Skylab entered orbit and jettisoned its large payload fairing as planned, but it was severely damaged….

[W]ith limited data it was difficult to determine a path forward. More data is always useful when dealing with unknown situations, and soon an offer of help came from an unusual corner, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which managed and operated the nation’s top secret intelligence collection satellites.

Major General David Bradburn, who was then the head of the Office of Special Projects, one of the NRO’s component offices and based in Los Angeles, quickly proposed that a GAMBIT-3 spacecraft, also known as the KH-8, readying for launch on May 16, be used to take a photograph of Skylab to assist NASA in planning a repair mission. The manned Skylab 2 mission, which had now become a repair mission, was scheduled to launch on May 25. That short turnaround time meant that the first phase of the GAMBIT’s photographic mission would have to be cut short in order to return the photos earlier so they could be used for planning the repair mission….

Bradburn was able to propose this mission because, for approximately six months, a group of junior Air Force officers in the Special Projects Office had been developing computer algorithms for using a GAMBIT-3 to photograph Soviet spacecraft. Their effort had been instigated by Soviet tests of an anti-satellite capability that the Soviets had declared operational in February 1973. They wanted the capability to take a photograph of a Soviet ASAT vehicle if one ever approached an American spacecraft. Because the computer programs were ready, the NRO was able to respond quickly to the Skylab problem—something that Bradburn was able to tell his superiors, and undoubtedly contributed to them approving the mission.

U.S. Makes First Plutonium in 25 Years, for Spacecraft || Scientific American

The United States has begun producing plutonium-238 again for the first time in a quarter century, marking a key step toward averting a feared shortage of this important spacecraft fuel, NASA officials say.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s plutonium reboot has not yet advanced beyond the test phase, but NASA is confident that production will eventually ramp up enough to power space probes for several decades to come.

“That’s going to revive our supply and allow us to be able to complete a number of potential plutonium-necessary missions over this decade, and position us well into the decade after that,” Jim Green, head of NASA’s planetary science division, said Monday….

Plutonium-238 is not a bombmaking material, unlike its isotopic cousin plutonium-239. But Pu-238 is radioactive, emitting heat that can be converted to electricity using a device called a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG).

For decades, RTGs have been the power system of choice for NASA missions to destinations in deep space, where weak sunlight tends to make solar arrays impractical. For example, the agency’s twin Voyager spacecraft, which are knocking on the door of interstellar space, both use RTGs, as does the car-size Mars rover, Curiosity.

The Satellite Collision that Never Happened? || Ares

What has been reported by mainstream press to have been a satellite collision in late January, which allegedly damaged a Russian satellite, never took place, according to a U.S. defense official.

Major news outlets reported last week that the Russian BLITS satellite collided with a piece of orbital debris left after China conducted an antisatellite test using its own Feng Yun 1C satellite as a target in 2007. They quote experts at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation, who say the collision occurred Jan. 22.

However, a defense official says such an incident never occurred. “There is no definitive proof there was a collision,” this source says. Experts at the Air Force’s Joint Space Operations Center in California constantly track orbital debris and satellites the size of a softball or larger using a global electro-optical and radar sensor capability. Debris from the destroyed Chinese weather satellite actually never came close enough to the Russian BLITS satellite for the Air Force to notify operators of a possible collision, this source says. The defense official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Chinese Space Debris Collides with Russian Satellite || Universe Today

The Center for Space Standards and Innovation (CSSI) has determined that on January 22, 2013 debris from the Chinese FENGYUN 1C collided with Russia’s BLITS satellite. The FENGYUAN 1C is the satellite that was destroyed by China on January 11, 2007 in a test of an anti-satellite missile. The collision changed the orbit of the Russian satellite, along with its spin velocity and attitude.