Sat Track Cam

I agree, I only learned it recently but there are a few very motivated individuals that track satellites and share a lot of the information. I learned about it during the whole Zuma fiasco, from the SatTrackCam blog [0]. I would definitely recommend reading it if this sort of thing interests you, it awesome to see how these guys do the tracking and the sheer amount of information they infer. The Zuma ones are great, along with the ones about the ISS and the satellite got close to it. [0] https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/

Certainly not, but one wouldn't need to catch every satellite launch for space weapon- one or two would be enough evidence to go public and warrant further scrutiny. There are a number of extremely savvy amateur astronomers across the world that track suspected military launches and publish their findings: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com

I believe this is his new blog http://sattrackcam.blogspot.mx/

No, this is not true. First of all, every nation is required by space law to publish the initial orbits of every object they launch, as part of that taking responsibility I mentioned earlier. The US Government further publishes tracking on pretty much every single thing in orbit of the earth larger than a few centimeters, to help satellite operators avoid space debris. They do obfuscate the current orbit of their own spy satellites (only publishing their initial orbit), but other countries and even private citizens around the world keep obsessive tabs on these things (e.g. https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/). This sort of thing is easily within the reach of even a medium sized nation state that was interested in the investment: just need a couple of big ole radars and you can do it just like the US does. So if you do try and hide the resources of a nation-state can easily counter. The solution to oppressive government is not technological, it's political. Prevent countries from going bad, retrieve the ones that have gone bad, it works out a lot better for everyone.

Much more info is posted here: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reen…

A better source: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reen…

Article says ±3.1 days, but the author wrote a newer entry (go to homepage, click on latest article, click through to space.com link¹) that says May 10, ±2.2 days. Starting to get to the range where a timezone would be helpful! Via Wikipedia², which will probably also get updated fast, this page says they'll stay updated with the latest estimate: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reen… ¹ https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/new-images… ² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_482

Marco Langbroek, who did the reentry forecast that the linked article is based on, convincingly argues[0] that the bus did separate and reenter separately (in 1981) and what remains in orbit is just the lander. There are several independent pieces of evidence that are consistent with this; the orbital decay pattern, the radar cross section and optical telescope observations all point to only the lander itself remaining. See also his blog[1] for an up-to-date reentry forecast. [0]: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4384/1 [1]: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reen…

Not really, McDowell says it most likely is, but he's "not fully convinced". Langbroek says it's plausible his blog goes on the explain why and show other debris was found in the region, references McDownell, the anonymous Twitter account, Arianespace's doubt. Langbroek even simulated the situation (in TU Delft Astrodynamics Toolbox[0]) with known information about recent flights. His blog post is pretty thorough.[1] It's a shame Arianespace (who.. you know, may be worried about reputation or liability) hasn't just posted an image of the SYLDA shell they say it isn't.. that would clear up the speculation. [0]: https://docs.tudat.space/en/latest/ [1]: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/01/possible-space-debris-impact-…

Those were already tracked by an amateur astronomer. What's your point? https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-nrol-146-payloads-observi…

> Orbits are exactly regular, by definition. Orbital parameter changes do happen but are rare. How does that match up with [0]? "... a satellite that stalks other satellites, started another relocation move on July 22, leaving its position near ASTRA 4A at longitude 4.8 E and drifting west at 0.9 degrees per day." Do they make this up, or do you and I have a vastly different understanding of "irregular"? [0] https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-russian-sigint-satellite-…

At least collision avoidance manoeuvres are not that common in GEO as far as I know, so things like this are more the exception: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/flaviomurolo_meteosat-mtg-satellite-act… Well, there's also the Russians sneaking around: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-russian-sigint-satellite-…

Trajectory is planned such that the ballistic trajectory minimizes the probability it will hit land. So it is relatively safe even if the engines and abort system fails. You can see the trajectory here and how they thread it through the Caribbean islands & Cuba. https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-starship-launch-attempt-o…

A picture of the flight path https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPvRfueAMkL… (taken from this website: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2023/11/new-starship-launch-attempt-o… ____ In animation form: https://twitter.com/spencertetik/status/1725769578544803975

It wasn't from Marshall islands at Hawaii as the target. The simulated target was the west coast, with it flying out roughly near Hawaii. There's a open source intelligence blog that confirmed this by noting where the navigation warning areas were announced during the test: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2020/11/sm-3-block-iia-missile-defens…

This is blogspam. Significantly higher quality article: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/09/image-from-trump-tweet-identi…

Original source: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/05/wowowow-spectacular-view-of-s…

https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/04/ most of the debris will stay on orbit for several weeks to months: by half a year from now, most of it should be gone however, except for a few lingering pieces. Probability is very low similar to the one in the below article. Odds of hitting is 1 in 300 Trillion https://www.livescience.com/61955-chinese-space-station-reentry.html

https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/fuel-dump-of-zumas-falcon-… mirrors: http://archive.is/chd3C https://web.archive.org/save/https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com.au/2018/…

This blog post suggests that the orbit was much higher than USA 276's: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.nl/2018/01/fuel-dump-of-zumas-falcon-9-up…

There is a link buried on this page that goes into more detail: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.dk/2011/11/lacrosse-5-disappearance-trick-… The key questions: > Is it a matter of strongly differing reflectance properties of the satellite body with illumination angle? Is it some brightly reflecting appendage on the satellite disappearing from view? Is it a dark appendage on the satellite starting to block view of the illuminated satellite body, or casting a shadow on it? Is it due to some moving part of the satellite, e.g. a moving dish antenna? It's all rather fascinating. Presumably having a stealth satellite is somewhat redundant as the objects will eventually be seen or tracked by other spacecraft or satellites?

The fuel dump is to prevent explosions before reentry that could damage the spacecraft it just delivered or create unnecessary space debris. https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2018/01/fuel-dump-of-zumas-falcon-9-u… > Rocket stages always carry excess fuel, as you don't want the engine to cut out prematurely by running out of fuel. So it always has a sufficient fuel margin. Once its work is done, this excess fuel is often vented, also known as "depressurization". > Depressurization and fuel venting avoids the risk of the rocket stage blowing up, for example as a result of static electricity building up in the rocket stage. You do not want your rocket stage to blow up, as it creates an uncontrolable swarm of debris and includes the risk that particles are ejected into orbits where they do not decay quickly, adding to the space debris risk. As for burning up, it's a bit of both. Some material burns up, some larger chunks splash into the ocean. Same thing happened a while back when the US dropped bits of Skylab on Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-31/nasa-skylab-fell-to-earth-esper…

That figure of 10 to 15 kJ can be very misleading about what it takes to propel something to such speeds. Put into 'TNT equivalent', it would take the entire energy of 50g of TNT to boost a 100g bolt by just 2 km/s. It's difficult to concentrate that much energy per mass in an explosion (which is leaky). To add further, most ASATs (including the Indian test) doesn't use explosives, but make a direct hit (hit to kill) from a suborbital trajectory (one that has much less energy than an orbital interceptor). The boosting comes mostly from fragmentation mechanics. The satellite will still fragment with some fragments getting boosted up to a higher velocity. In addition, the propellants on the satellite and the kill vehicle might add velocity to the fragments too - though arguably less energy than if it was TNT. So, previous studies on US and Chinese ASAT debris cloud can be considered for a fair assessment. The Chinese test was at a higher altitude of 865km and US test was at a similar altitude. 'Gabbard plot' of these debris show the maximum altitude to be only around 3900 km for both tests. There could be untracked particles at higher orbits, but remember that the velocities of the debris is a random distribution (not sure which one) that tapers at extreme values. Odds of any debris crossing geostationary orbit is very low. There is one additional significant point to consider. Boosted orbits mostly retain the altitude at interception (it's the diametrically opposite part of…