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Ikonos 1 lost in space 78

Posted by Hemos from the lost-in-time-lost-in-space-and-meaning dept.
Tom Rothamel writes "The Ikonos 1 satellite was lost on launch. Seeing that its mission was essentially to sell spy satellite photography, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. " It was interesting idea-selling satellite photos to private companies and such. Man-we could have had a great picture done of Geek Complex3. Snif.
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Ikonos 1 lost in space More

Ikonos 1 lost in space

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  • Conspiracy - Not! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    OK folks, take it easy on the conspiracy theories. The US government already has lots of control over satellite imagery collected by US companies, so they don't need to take a satellite out of operation to prevent imaging of stuff they don't want seen. However, the US government doesn't control data distributed by non-US groups such as Spot Image in France, and the loads of old Russian spy imagery being sold cheap. That is a bit of a concern for them.

    The government also has lots of better spy satellites, and has for well over a decade.

    This is just another unfortunate screwup in the satellite industry. Nothing earth shattering, but unfortunate for the remote sensing industry as a whole which needs more, better and cheaper data.

    Ikonos 2 is apparently already built, and should be launched relatively soon.

    Folks might want to learn more about remote sensing at the OSRS Watercooler [remotesensing.org] which was launched with the mission of being a SlashDot for the Remote Sensing and GIS community.

  • Clearing a few things up (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. Check out this [cnn.com] for a better article. I don't know why Slashdot never points to a simple story that gets right to the heart of the story.

    2. Check out this [microsoft.com] for an even bigger surprise. Yup, that's right. MS already has similar plans. Although the images are much less than 1m resolution, it's getting there.

    3. It actually is worse that they lost the satellite. If they still still had it, the company can be watched to make sure the photos don't get into the wrong hands. Now that it is gone, no one knows who may still have control of it, and the REAL havoc could start.

    4. Military spy satellites aren't much better than 1m resolution. Don't believe everything you see in the movies. The pics of suspected mass gravesites in Kosovo are about 1m resolution. The military has other tricks up their sleeve to make the image better.

    5. The whole story sounds fishy to me. Although you can lose track of a satellite because of broken communication, you should still be able to track it. They know the burn-out velocity and the heading before they lost contact, and depending on if additional burns were necessary, they can pin-point the location of the satellite with no problem. I smell possible conspiracy.

    6. Hey, shit happens. Why do people always believe that a precision weapon will ALWAYS hit their target, that an airplane should NEVER crash, a rocket should NEVER have accidents? Aerospace Engineers typically operate with a safety margin of 1.25 - 1.5. NEVER beyond 2. That old question "Why don't they make planes out of the same stuff as the black box?" answers itself. If you had, the plane would never be able to fly. Murphy's Law still works, people!

  • I attended Space Access '99 last weekend, a conference on cheap space access, and a representative of the commercial launch industry (International Launch Services, a consortium of Lockheed-Martin and the Russians that launches Atlas and Proton rockets) said that two of their 24 launches last year were scrubbed because the satellites were not in working order when they reached the launch sites. He said it was quite possible that a bad one might slip by their inspection. This was, of course, before the Ikonos launch.

    Apparently the launch industry and satellite builders are now under pressure to complete shorter and shorter business cycles, just like industry in general. And impossible deadlines
    lead to bad work.
  • ... isn't going to happen. While the first one was planned for 1986, after the Challenger that was cancelled. Space Launch Complex 6 was mothballed soon after, and IIRC it's currently being converted to launch the EELV rockets.

    Sorry.
  • And so ends the first test flight of Microsoft Windows CE for spy sattelites.

    I wonder if the control board has a blue LED of death?

  • Well, it's not better than current US spy satellites, but it is certainly better than anything Senior Dictatado has. I think there are several Government agencies that wanted to keep this satellite out of the hands of the public, weather they did anything or not is another question however.

  • Pardon me for being a cynic, but All I can think of is some goverment paying to "loose" this satalite and then aiming it where they want to, to take pictures where they want to of what they want to know.

  • ". Military spy satellites aren't much better than 1m resolution. Don't believe everything you see in the
    movies. The pics of suspected mass gravesites in Kosovo are about 1m resolution. The military has other
    tricks up their sleeve to make the image better."

    ... and the military also have tricks up their sleeves to reduce the apparent resolution of the RELEASED satellite image. . .
  • I watched this launch. Pretty boring. We're about 25 miles north of Vandenburg, and there were some low clouds, so there wasn't much to see after the first two seconds or so.

    I'm still waiting for a shuttle launch from Vandenburg. Why should dumb old Floridians have all the fun?
  • "All that talk of "The government/Russians/Big Bussiness has satelittes that can read a newspaper on the
    ground" are unfounded. "

    Nobody said it was "the government/Russians/Big Business". It's the Aliens, who can do that (with a big telescope situated on Phobos, Mars' moon), and they sell the pics to the US Government.
  • Unfortunately, IKONOS-1 is just the latest in a long sequence of failed remote sensing satellite launches. The biggest blow to the RS community was the launch failure of Landsat 6 a few years ago, the loss of Lewis [af.mil] in 1997 was also extremely depressing. Luckily, Landsat 7 [nasa.gov] launched succesfully last week. The next major RS launch is that of EOS AM-1 [nasa.gov] in July - if this isn't successful I'm out of a PhD :-(

    The IKONOS-1 people aren't too bothered, these things happen and of course they were fully insured - IKONOS-2 is complete and will be launched by the end of the year. My theory is that the launch was disrupted by SPOT [spot.com] :-)

    As far as the guff people are talking about spy satellites - remote sensing imagery has a THEORETICAL resolution of about 15cm. This is imposed by atmospheric disturbance. Spy satellites are designed for this resolution but the resulting imagery rarely approaches it. The main difference between spy satellites and RS satellites is that the spy satellites can execute orbit transfers a limited number of times (before they run out of propellant), resulting in an increased revist rate. They also of course do stereo (like SPOT). Unfortunately the military aren't exactly clued on how to analyse satellite data - we're talking transparencies, light tables and magic markers - don't believe the stuff you see in the movies.

    Actually, the allies in the gulf war ended up buying a shitload of imagery from SPOT simply because the spy satellite stuff wasn't up to scratch (not multispectral, images too small and too high resolution to go launcher-hunting in the desert). The French government tried to lean on SPOT to give a discount but they actually upped their rates realising they had a monopoly...

    Nick

  • Point 4:

    They're much better than that. Hell, they'll admit they're much better than that. A few weeks ago on Good Morning America (a morning show on the ABC network for you non-US people), there was a gentleman who was showing the spy-sat pictures of the gravesites. He said several interesting things. First off he said they'd signficantly blurred the images to hide what the satellites were capable of imaging (because he was saying they could actually count the bodies, even though the images he was showing couldn't). And he gave an example of a quality he could admit they had -- and held his hands apart about 18 inches or so, and said they could see both hands from orbit.

    Do the math. Figure 18 inches apart is half a meter. To see its *two* objects that far apart -- and differentiate them, you'd need twice that resolution.

    So the military is willing to admit to 1/4 meter resolution satellites. That's a hell of a lot more detailed than 1+ meter images that this non-military satellite had, and no comparison to the crap on the terraserver website. And you know they wouldn't admit to the best quality they had.

  • Naive (Score:1)

    by MouseR ( 3264 )
    I think it's pretty naive to think that someone could "loose" a (hint hint) SPY satellite.

    Think about it: "The People" knows about a new spy satellite being launched. It's pretty hard to conceil a launch. And it's pretty hard to keep entire companies absolutelly silent on such a subject.

    What's the best way to deal with it? "loose" it. Then, you're free doing whatever you want with the damn thing, and can peek-a-boo anyone from there, while everyone else keep a close eye on other satellite.

    You did _know_ that it's possible to see a satellite from the ground, and even calculate where it's aiming to, right?

  • This is Ground Control to Major Tom:
    You've really made the grade, and the papers want to know who's shirts you wear. Over.

    Gene Hackman movies are always good. ;)

  • How about a reality check?

    Do you think ESA should have their books audited because the first Ariane 5 was destroyed on launch?

    Mishaps actually happen in this kind of business.

    As someone pointed out in another note (not now :):

    This is, after all, rocket science.
  • Today's definition of Spy Satellite is a picture of a truck where you can clearly see the bolts on it's roof. We are talking about 1cm resolution...live, plus infrared and maybe something more. So your government don't need to buy someone else's images, they can acquire the picture of my mother making out with the milkman if they want to...

  • There is a whole crop of hi-rez earth imaging satellites about to ripen, and Ikonos was just the second... unfortunately, it was also the second to fail upon launch (or so it seems today). Prior to Ikonos [spaceimage.com] there was EarlyBird 1 [digitalglobe.com], a 3-meter camera by EarthWatch. Between now and next summer, several more systems will be launched, most notably EarthWatch's QuickBird [digitalglobe.com] and Orbital Imaging's OrbView-3 [orbimage.com] But don't count Ikonos out quite yet. Spacecraft have occasionally recovered from such conditions and provided a useful life. (After another day or two, though, you can nail the coffin shut. If Ikonos' batteries drain, there's no hope of recovery.)

    As one of the systems engineers responsible for designing the optical and detector subsystems used on both the OrbView-3 and OrbView-4 [orbimage.com] satellites, I can tell you what these reconnaisance systems can and can't do.

    Resolution translates to two seperate functions: detection and identification. At 1-meter resolution, these cameras can detect an automobile, a tree, or an individual steer. It's possible to detect even an individual sunbather (if she's got a dark tan and is contrasted against white sand), but unless you knew it was a sunbather beforehand, you wouldn't be able to tell if its a he or a she, or even tell it apart from a vacant beach chair. That would be identification. To identify an object, its image must span several pixels on the detector, if not dozens. Therefore, Ikonos could detect a police car, but it couldn't read the call letters on its roof to identify that car.

    Further, most of these systems are limited by the power available to point the satellite accurately and to run the camera. Without a monstrous solar array to provide enough power to continuously run attitude control, transmitters and detectors, the spacecraft must rely on the energy stored in its batteries. Thus, the cameras are limited to less than a half an hour of imaging per 90-minute orbit. Less if the sattelite is required to reorient itself in order to photograph noncontiguous regions. By no means can these systems take daily global high-resolution photos of the entire earth.

    These satellites generally orbit somewhere between 700 and 800 km above the earth, in a polar orbit inclined nearly 90 from the equator. This translates to a "ground speed" of about 7 km/s. Most operators aim for a "sun synchronous" polar orbit, meaning that the spacecraft passes the equator at the same times every day, once going northbound (ascending node) and once headed south (descending node). The OrbView satellites ascending node crossing time is 10:30 am, for example. All of these numbers add up to the fact that at best, these cameras can only take one good picture of you each day. If someone were really motivated, they might be able to take two or three, but only one could be from directly overhead.

    This is true also because the detectors on these cameras are linear photodiode arrays, made by folks like Kodak. These detectors are almost identical to the ones found in your scanner or office copier. And they work pretty much the same way: the satellite carries the detector overhead at a constant rate, and samples the array thousands of times per second. The successive linear images are piled up to create a 2D photograph. It's even possible to take two "scans" of a region from different angles, and then process this information on the ground to create a stereo 3D image. If you have the money to pay for it...

    Each of these systems carries more than one array. The 1-meter resolution arrays are panchromatic or black-and-white, and are sensitive to the entire range of visible and Near-IR light: wavelengths of 450 to 900 nanometers. There are also 4-meter resolution multispectral arrays, with pixels 4x as big as the panchromatic arrays. These are four arrays have color filters to distinguish radiance in four color bands, generally chosen in the same bands as used on LandSat systems: 450-520nm, 520-600nm, 625-695nm, and 760-900nm.

    OrbView-4 is unique among these systems, carrying a hyperspectral detector. Hyperspectral detectors generally employ an imaging spectrometer: the telescope image is passed through a very narrow slit, focussed on a diffraction grating, and the dispersed light is then imaged on a 2D CCD array. This scheme provides hundreds of linear images covering a continous series of narrow wavelength bands. OrbView-4 will cover the range of 450-2500 nm, extending from blue deep into the infrared. This kind of detailed information sounds like a gold mine, but there is a slight risk - it's the first of its kind to provide this sort of information, so there's no established demand. In fact, scientists are still figuring out what to do with this much data...

    What are the theoretical limits on these kinds of systems? One satellite in geostationary orbit, with unimaginatively expensive optics and an energy-gluttonous data system could indeed continuously monitor one-third of the globe. But in practice, a system like this would cost GigaDollars and prove very unreliable. The theoretical limit of resolution is approximately 10 centimeters, without using some sort of technique to instantaneously correct for atmospheric disturbances. And then there's the whole question of shipping all that data down to the folks who don't have time to look at it all...

    And belive me, Space Imaging's investors put up way too much money to let the Pentagon commandeer a satellite that could potentially bring them very lucrative returns on their venture capitol. The Pentagon couldn't afford to pay these folks enough to shut them up. Besides, launch failures happen way too often to divert Occam's Razor to point to any other conclusion. The launch system is still the most risky and unreliable rung on the ladder to space. Given number of nearly identical imaging satellites on the way, it will be the launch systems that will sort out the winners from the losers.

    I'm happy to entertain any questions you might have - be sure to de-spamproof my email address.

  • There are a lot of wild conspiracy ideas floating around, but the truth is better:

    The government of Israel has successfully lobbied Congress and the State Department to forbid US-based reconnaisance systems from imaging Israeli territory. By Law, Ikonos could not take pictures of Israel. This is the only place on earth which is forbidden to image from orbit.

    It gets better. In 1995, the State Department denied the Israelis any special consideration, after lots of talking and negotiation. It was close, though. Then, in 1998, the issue came up again, and this time, the Israelis got their way.

    Now that is fuel for conspiracy theorists...

    Even I'm a bit POed - whose interests is our government supposed to look out for?? Ours or the Israelis?

  • Can they confirm that it won't come crashing back down to earth? Can they confirm that if it did, it would be totally destroyed on re-entry?

    I don't want the thing to fall on my house.
  • I'm not too suprised. You must remember, Florida journalists have a lot of experience covering space launches. It only makes sense to send the people who already know what they're talking about to cover it.
  • Earthwatch [digitalglobe.com] lost a similar remote sensing satellite, Earlybird, in Dec. 1997 I think. At least it made it to orbit. I don't remember the reason, but I think the batteries somehow drained too fast (some instruments were turned on too early or something like that) and therefore knocked out the comm system.

    Fortunately it was insured, and the money is being used to finish the next generation satellite. Hopefully it will be successful later this year.

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • There are restrictions. Obviously the companies cannot sell information to certain countries, not that you couldn't buy them and e-mail them Saddam.

    The last hoopla I heard about was that Israel had some sort of agreement with the U.S. that American companies would not sell information regarding Israel. If this is true, I don't know why other countries don't have similar agreements. I don't know what the final outcome of this agragement was.

    As far as privacy concerns go, I would be more afraid of airplanes flying above me than some satellite.

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • And belive me, Space Imaging's investors put up way too much money to let the Pentagon commandeer a satellite that could potentially bring them very lucrative returns on their venture capitol. The Pentagon couldn't afford to pay these folks enough to shut them up. Besides, launch failures happen way too often to divert Occam's Razor to point to any other conclusion. The launch system is still the most risky and unreliable rung on the ladder to space. Given number of nearly identical imaging satellites on the way, it will be the launch systems that will sort out the winners from the losers.

    I must agree with your comment above comment. The launch business is very risky no matter how many precautions one can realistically take. Part of the success will come from luck.

    I want to point out that QuickBird 1 will be in a non-sun-syncronous orbit to permit customers the option of viewing at various times of day. I don't know the orbit drift to say it is possible to view the same location more than once in the same day though.

    Incidentally, a good overview of the applications of remote sensing can be found at Earthwatch [digitalglobe.com]. I'm sure the other companies have something similar.

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • ...and then formed Microsoft.

    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • Hardly necessary for a government.

    How about a corporation? There are a few that might fit the bill.
  • Heheh. And I quote:

    Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01f4'

    Variable is undefined: 'strConciseLink'

    /DisplayImage.inc, line 15
  • The Ikonos satelitte was not intended to be a spy satelitte. It's resolution (each pixel) is one square meter. All that talk of "The government/Russians/Big Bussiness has satelittes that can read a newspaper on the ground" are unfounded.

    Certainly, the US and other governments have technologies that are classified, but by most accounts the rummors are exagerated.

    But that's what they want you to believe...

    Or, lost in space? hmm.. No more accountability. Snap away.

    If I'm wearing a white shirt on a black road, the satelitte will see a one meter, dark grey spot. Not very good evidence in most courts.

    -=nft=-
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching...
  • The real conspiracy is that they just *said* it didn't make orbit and faked some photos. ;)
  • The idea that an organization with enough money, let alone technology, to launch a satellite and then not invest as least as much money ensuring that any mishaps would be dealt with should have their books audited. It seems that they would at least make sure that the communications system worked flawlessly, since without that, the entire satellite is just a large piece of space junk.
  • Well, considering US missile/satellite tracking systems and the fact that the US military has the ability to shoot down satellites from the ground I don' think that they couldn't get away with that.
  • I think you're right on... but why sell it to a government when they can give it to our government in exchange for tax breaks, preferential contractor status, DOJ immunity, and other such freebies?

    Not to mention how much No Such Agency or the USAF would enjoy having a satellite that "didn't exist."

    Maybe Ikonos is actually a killer satellite, sent to take out foreign sats with a plausible excuse--"Sorry, that must have been our lost satellite..."

    Or, um, maybe not...

    -jurph

    p.s. Why is it that every time someone offers me a penny for my thoughts, I end up giving them two-cents'-worth? A guy could go broke.

  • What's Geek Complex3?
  • I'm surprised none of you have blamed an evil bald industrialist with a white Persian cat...
  • Several commercial satellites already possessed similar capabilities. For instance, radarsat 1 has a 7 metre resolution, and can grab images even through cloud cover. Not quite as good as this one, but close.

    But I do remember when radarsat was being used to search for that yacht in the race around the south pole that got lost. Apparently they were just a little short of the resolution needed to find it, so maybe this would have been useful in such situations.

    If they want to take a picture of my roof, it really doesn't bother me. Just don't tell me that I can't write rude messages on my roof -- just another form of censorship! :)

  • Wow Nice Pictures, very nice geek stuff. Kinda a expensive goof up though.
  • They sure do, its becoming kinda a growth market with the boom in comercial satellite deployment. Comapnies like Stening Simpson [steningsimpson.com.au] generate a good deal of cash doing this.


  • That satellite isn't much of a "spy" satelite....
    If you take a look at this article [flatoday.com], the images have 1 meter resolution (i.e 1 pixel = 1 meter om the ground.) Very nice for civilian use, but nothing compared to what's already up there in military satellites, AFAIK. It's been a while since I learned a bit about Remote Sensing at college, but I guess 1 meter resolution was common in military satellites 20 years ago or so...
  • That Swatch hijacked this satellite also? ;-)
  • Can you hear me, Major Tom?

    /* Come on, admit it, you were thinking the same thing. :) */

    CEO of satellite company -- "See? THAT'S why we can't have nice things!"
  • You can buy spy sat images from them of almost any major city or mility bas in the Us and the world. Area 51 looks nice too and they say it doesn't exist.

  • I dunno. I mean, I felt more than a little uneasy when I heard about this satellite in the first place. On one hand, it'd make things like BADGER (maps of the SF Bay Area superimposed on aerial photographs) implementable all over the place. On the other, I'm not so sure I like the idea of being observed that closely all the time I'm outdoors.

    Other people have already suggested that it was not exactly accidental, and I'd have to say that I think it's quite credible that the bird was hijacked by some spook. If there's one thing we've learned about the US intelligence agencies, it's that they'll exploit every opportunity to abuse their power and conceal information, and I don't doubt that other countries' agencies are similar.

  • The launch of L7 was as close to perfect as you could expect to get, and four days after launch, the first ETM+ imagery was received at the EROS Data Center (it looked great!) Aside from a few minor anomolies that were resolved, the spacecraft and sensor are in great shape. Currently, the ETM+ instrument is being outgassed (that is, acclimated to conditions in space) and preparations are underway for Landsat 7 to underfly Landsat 5.

    All in all, it's been a rousing success so far. If everything goes according to plan, expect the first data to be made available to the public on or about July 1st.
  • There are two primary sources of data that Microsoft has used for the Terraserver project: the declassified Russian military imagery (the SPIN-2 imagery) and digital orthophoto quadrangles provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. The latter, which are what you are looking at if you're looking at the United States, is aerial photography .. not satellite imagery.
  • Currently, the Service module *should* be en route to Baikanour to be readied for launch later this year. The modules are built and then shipped by rail to the launch center. During that trip, all hell gets shaken around and all the factory inspections must be repeated at the launch site.

    Yup, pressure is a big thing but apparently not for the friggin service module. Been waiting on it for nearly two years now.

    RB
  • The whole premise is kinda bull anyway, who in their right mind is gonna advertise the launching of a 'spy' satellite in the first place?

    "Weather research, yeah, that's the ticket", not, "Yeah, it's a SPY bird, gonna clickclickclick yer old lady nekkid and sell it on the Internet!"
  • I can think of a lot of reasons the US, and other
    major governments would not want this thing in the
    air. Essentially a low cost spy satellite, imagine
    the uses this thing could provide for terrorists,
    and other malicious parties. Im really not too
    clear on its intended purposes, but thats what I
    was able to gather from this anyways.
  • Do they insure against these sorts of things? If they did, some risk management guys are looking pretty god right about now...
  • Amen! If I was launching a spy satellite, I would want it to be "lost" too.

    ALG

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