Satellites While most authorities claim no satellites have been stolen, I heard a rumor the other day that stated one may have. Not much information accompanied the rumor. If that hasn’t happened yet, it is bound to happen in the future. I imagine there are a lot of secret technology in some of them that a country just can’t wait to get their hands on. So, what could be stopping them? The technology of succeeding at such a task must be daunting. As you have probably noticed by now, the maneuverability in rockets has been improving in leaps and bounds. It would be enough to just have a very maneuverable rocket, I imagine it would have to be quite stealthy also. When one asks the question has any satellite been stolen, they can never be sure when the answer comes up no, because some satellites have disappeared. There have been cases where satellites have disappeared and some have been found again many years later. One satellite was found in May of 2024, after disappearing in 1974, that was 50 years later. That is proof it wasn’t stolen or was it? I say maybe not, it could have been stolen and brought back, as unlikely as that sounds. One of the reasons I say it is getting more likely to happen is we now have aircraft capable of reaching low orbit, this is one of the latest inventions and if they are stealthy, they might be able to fly up to a satellite undetected, grab it into their hold, if it is big enough, and fly away unnoticed. Let’s say a country with one of these planes just wanted to fly next to one of the secret satellites and use sophisticated electronic sensors on it to try and determine what was in it, they might be able to gain quite a bit of data from being in such close proximity. In the old days when satellites were fairly new, the Soviet Union tried to protect an early space station named Almaz by installing a cannon on it, but found they couldn’t fire it because the recoil might push the station out of its place in orbit. The cannon was capable of firing an incredible 5,000 shots per minute and known as the R-21M Kartech. It fired a shell which was about ½ inch. There are far too many satellites in orbit especially when you consider the over 2,770 ones said to be inactive and are just taking up space, pardon the pun. Right now, active satellites are said to number near 10,000. There are also hundreds of pieces of space junk orbiting the earth. As more countries develop their space programs, more satellites enter orbit. Another problem is hacking which is going on at a breakneck pace on earth. Many of us has had their personal info hacked and most of it is through no fault of their own. Most was taken from sites we have absolutely no control over and some of them collect our data like Experian and Equifax to name a couple. Even the ones which have our medical info have been hacked. There is no hope for protection of our info because among other things, there is a low standard for protection on some sites. It is too late for us to be protected because the cat is out of the bag and so is our information, so we have to start thinking about how we can protect the new generations of data. As some satellites are used for the internet, there has to be weaknesses in them and I believe it is only a matter of time before they are hacked, or maybe they have been already. When we investigate, we find the Viasat KA-SAT was hacked just before the Ukraine war. The satellite provides internet and television services to Europe and the Middle East. There was a case a few years ago where hackers were able to fire a satellite’s thrusters and move it out of orbit. One can imagine how this can cause the satellite to get lost. Some experts are saying the design of satellites has to be changed to protect them. I am not so sure this would always work. Look at how we tried to protect our computers and yet quite a few attacks are always getting through. Other abilities have been invented which now allow us to shoot down satellites. The United States, China and Russia have demonstrated this ability. The United States first did it with a ship fired missile in 2008, but before that in 1985 we shot one down from a F-15A fighter jet using an ASM-135A missile. China shot down an old weather satellite in 2007 using a ballistic missile. Russia did it in 2021 and it caused the ISS crew to take shelter. In 2024 it launched a satellite which is believed to be able to shoot down other satellites. It turns out all our satellites are now potential targets and we rely on them for so many different technological functions, we could be paralyzed without them. We have satellites at many different levels of orbit. There are Geostationary satellites which are orbiting at about 22,000 miles above the earth and are stationary to the earth’s rotation. There are a few satellites in a Polar orbit, others in a medium orbit, many of these are navigation systems. Next are the low orbit satellites. These orbit the earth at about 99 miles to 930 miles. They have a short orbital period. There are even satellites which keep the same angle to the sun. The era of the satellite is relatively young, and we are going to get more intricate satellites in the future as electronics improve. A satellite can be jammed by emitting what is known as noise on the same frequency the satellite uses. If some countries get into a war and both are advanced in technology they may and try to jam all of each other’s satellite signals. This is a less violent way to keep them disabled rather than shooting them down. Shooting down satellites may have the unwanted effect of damaging other country’s satellites and getting them into the fight. Satellites are a great help, but they also will all have targets on their backs during a conflict. Take the Israeli war for example. Israel has several satellite programs and if some of their enemies had the ability, they might shoot down Israeli satellites. So far it hasn’t come to that yet. Look for the next big war to take place on earth and in space.
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