[FPSPACE] Russian Official: No Evidence Satellite Exploded In Orbit -- except there IS

[Jim Oberg]

This denial is puzzling, because the 200 pieces are there in orbit,
giving fits to the collision avoidance troops for ISS.... 

Who is keeping it secret, and who has been ordered to deceive?

Official: No Evidence Russian Satellite Exploded In Orbit

Moscow Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey  in English 0635 GMT 16 Jul 08

   FARNBOROUGH, United Kingdom. July 16(Interfax-AVN) - The Russian space monitoring system has detected no evidence for media reports that claimed, citing NASA, that a Russian military satellite had exploded in orbit and that its fragments threatened the International Space Station (ISS), a senior Russian official said.

   Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), was speaking to Interfax-AVN at a current aircraft show in Farnborough.

   Davydov confirmed that the United States had asked Roscosmos for information on satellites of the same class that have exploded while in orbit the past.

   "For some reason, questions of this kind didn't arise in the years when this was happening. These days there are such questions all of a sudden. Our interpretation is very simple: there is certain interest in vehicles of this class that are used in the interests of our Defense Ministry," Davydov said.

   "As for the latest incident, to date Defense Ministry has neither confirmed nor denied it for us. It is one of their facilities and it isn't being used for its original purpose. There have been vehicles of this type in the past that exploded," he said.

   Davydov said Roscosmos was open to discussing with NASA threats to the ISS posed by space junk. 

versus this account on 'National People's Republic Radio', hardly a hotbed of anti-Russian seething....

Russian Satellite Debris Poses Hazard

by David Kestenbaum, NPR // All Things Considered, July 16, 2008

    NASA is carefully tracking some 500 pieces of debris from a Russian intelligence satellite that may pose a hazard for the international space station. The satellite exploded in March; another piece of it broke apart in June.

   In recent days, a couple of pieces looked like they might come close enough to the international space station to prompt an evasive maneuver, says Gene Stansbery, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helps track debris. Further tracking, however, indicated the debris would pass at a safe distance.

   This model of Russian satellite has a history of occasional and peculiar breakups.

   "They undergo these mysterious spasms," says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "And what's unusual about this latest one is that there's so much debris - much more than in any previous explosion of a satellite of this type."

The satellites, known as EORSATs - Electronic Ocean Reconnaissance Satellites - have been in use since the 1970s. Some analysts believe the satellites are used to track U.S. Navy ships from their radio transmissions.

   Most analysts believe the breakups are intentional, McDowell says. The initial explosion seems to happen when the satellite is within range of a Russian tracking station, "which leads one to imagine that it's them sending a radio signal going 'blow up now,'" McDowell says.

   McDowell says the subsequent breakups may be due to residual fuel igniting.

   Stansbery says NASA has contacted Russian officials in the past about the occasional messy breakups of these satellites, but hasn't received a response. Russia is a major partner in the international space station.

   The 500 pieces being tracked are at least a couple of inches in size, Stansbery says. He says the debris cloud probably also includes smaller bits that the network can't track.

   "In those cases, you don't have any warning if one would come close" to the international space station, Stansbery says, though the risk from those pieces is low.

   Stansbery says he's heard the Russians are retiring this model of satellite. The Russian Embassy did not return a call seeking comment.



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