20-year-old Military Weather Satellite Apparently Exploded in Orbit

Heres some Kirkland info...www.thelivingmoon.com...

ok! it was me who shot it down.
I am black mailing USA.
they give me 1B $
and I dont shoot down the best satalights.

I wonder how many countries could or would have the capability of hacking a satellite. A few keystrokes and the satellite is burning up in the atmosphere. Reminds me of Under Siege 2 with Steven Seagal.

a reply to: buddha

You said you'd wait until SUMMER when we got the ZOMBIE virus up....

Could it have been an Alkaloid battery explosion?

Here is a star wars article from Maxwell Air-force Base from the same time period as this satellite was built. Just thought it was an interesting article in that the satellite that blew up was from the same time period. www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

This satellite had some very interesting systems on board. These included very advanced electromagnetic field and thermal energy sensing packages. nsidc.org...

I found this information about attitude control systems very interesting.

Three-axis attitude control is maintained in the orbital configuration by automatic momentum exchange between three momentum wheels. Onboard magnetic coils provide controlled interaction with the Earth's magnetic field to prevent the accumulation of wheel secular momentum. Operations of these coils is under control of the closed loop spacecraft attitude control system. Both the momentum wheels and gyroscopes are backed up by a fourth skewed unit for redundancy.

It sounds like a reaction-less thrust system.

a reply to: clay2 baraka
Not that old. That plus targeting a newer one would garner more scrutiny than they'd case for at this time and piss us off a whole lot more. Isn't 20 years or so ago when they started doing work for the DoD?

Sounds like a thermal runaway on a battery to me. I saw a helicopter battery explode once. Fortunately we had gotten it out of the aircraft and well away from the hangar.

a reply to: cavtrooper7

Yes and in theory several innocent looking "Commercial" communications satellites could do the job by combining there signals on a specific point, i.e. the target satellite so it is possible that this came from up there as a test though it is unlikely at the moment that the space agency or even black budget guy's would hide it so in plain sight and more likely it was something put up there by the X shuttle.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Elton

Sounds like a laser test.

First thing that sprang into my mind, that..

Interesting...

a reply to: machineintelligence

Damn it, you beat me ^^
nsidc.org...

Wasn't it China that claimed it was developing a new highly advanced anti-satellite weapon? Like a laser or something. Or maybe the US destroyed this old satellite as a test for a weapon of its own.

from the OPs article:

DMSP-F13 flew in a 800-kilometer sun-synchronous polar orbit popular for weather and spy satellites.

(emphasis added)

Lucky shot by North Korea.

a reply to: AreUKiddingMe

Yeah and this particular satellite was for weather. Which is why it was in that orbit.

a reply to: Elton

Sounds like a fuel tank lossed pressure causing the satellite to change orbit the fuel is highly reactive and the satellite exploded. A laser isn't going to hurt a satellite with a reflective coating to prevent the sun from heating it up. If they didn't see something streaking towards it it was a rocket failure.

originally posted by: buddha
ok! it was me who shot it down.
I am black mailing USA.
they give me 1B $
and I dont shoot down the best satalights.

Lol CIA dragged you off to a black site yet?

originally posted by: stumason

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Elton

Sounds like a laser test.

First thing that sprang into my mind, that..

Interesting...

First thing that sprang into my mind was metor hit.

a reply to: dragonridr

Actually, yes a laser can hurt a satellite. They were used to blind them in the 70s, and recently have been used to destroy other satellites in tests.