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--- transportation:satellites [2026/01/30 21:17] – [Jumpseat] timb
+++ transportation:satellites [2026/03/17 21:22] (current) – [DRACO] timb
@@ Line 3086: / Line 3086: @@
 ====== ESA ======
+===== CryoSat =====
+== A Clever Software Patch Gave This Ice Satellite a Wild New Trick ==
+A software upgrade allowed CryoSat to monitor disturbances caused by a geomagnetic storm.
+Passant Rabie - March 17, 2026
+On January 18, the Sun released a powerful eruption of high-energy particles that reached Earth in a jiff. The eruption caused some of the most intense radiation storms on record, resulting in disturbances to Earth’s magnetic field. Meanwhile, an ice-monitoring satellite had just received a software update to its navigation system, allowing it to observe the impact of the solar storm while also keeping a steady watch on the ice sheets.
+For nearly 16 years, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) CryoSat has been measuring the thickness of polar sea ice and monitoring changes in Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. At the end of last year, ESA engineers remotely upgraded the software for one of the satellite’s instruments. The new software allowed CryoSat to measure changes in Earth’s magnetosphere, just in time to observe the aftermath of an intense geomagnetic storm.
+CryoSat’s measurements of Earth’s magnetic field are detailed in a study published in Geophysical Research Letters.
+https://gizmodo.com/a-clever-software-patch-gave-this-ice-satellite-a-wild-new-trick-2000734135
 ===== DRACO =====
@@ Line 3933: / Line 3952: @@
 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/gps-is-vulnerable-to-jamming-heres-how-we-might-fix-it/
+== Military GPS Jamming is Interfering with the Navigation Systems of Commercial Ships ==
+Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday March 07, 2026 10:34AM
+"Within 24 hours of the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, ships in the region's waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire," reports CNN, "erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land.
+"The location confusion was a result of widespread jamming and spoofing of signals from global positioning satellite systems."
+<blockquote>
+Used by all sides in conflict zones to disrupt the paths of drones and missiles, the process involves militaries and affiliated groups intentionally broadcasting high-intensity radio signals in the same frequency bands used by navigation tools. Jamming results in the disruption of a vehicle's satellite-based positioning while spoofing leads to navigation systems reporting a false location. Though commercial vessels are not the target, the electronic interference disrupted the navigation systems of more than 1,100 commercial ships in UAE, Qatari, Omani and Iranian waters on February 28, according to a report from Windward, a shipping intelligence firm. Jamming and spoofing also slowed marine traffic moving through the Strait of Hormuz, a congested shipping lane that handles roughly 20% of the world's oil and gas exports and where precise navigation is essential, Windward's data showed.... Daily incidents have more than doubled, rising from 350 when the conflict began to 672 by March 2, the firm reported.
+As use of this warfare tactic grows, experts worry the impacts could reach far beyond battlespaces.... In June 2025, electronic interference with navigation systems was thought to be a factor in the collision between two oil tankers, Adalynn and Front Eagle, off the coast of the UAE... The number of global positioning system signal loss events affecting aircraft increased by 220% between 2021 and 2024, according to data from the International Air Transport Association. Last year, IATA said that the aviation industry must act to stay ahead of the threat.
+</blockquote>
+https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/07/0521211/military-gps-jamming-is-interfering-with-the-navigation-systems-of-commercial-ships
@@ Line 3959: / Line 3994: @@
 https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/10/gps_modernization_us_gao/
+== ULA isn’t making the Space Force’s GPS interference problem any easier ==
+Officials expect the investigation into a booster anomaly on ULA’s Vulcan rocket to last multiple months.
+Stephen Clark – Feb 26, 2026 5:31 AM
+DENVER—The Global Positioning System is one of the few space programs that touches nearly every human life, and the stewards of the satellite navigation network are eager to populate the fleet with the latest and greatest spacecraft.
+The US Space Force owns and operates the GPS constellation, providing civilian and military-grade positioning, navigation, and timing signals to cell phones, airliners, naval ships, precision munitions, and a whole lot more.
+One reason for routinely launching GPS satellites is simply “constellation replenishment,” said Col. Andrew Menschner, deputy commander of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command. Old satellites degrade and die, and new ones need to go up and replace them. At least 24 GPS satellites are needed for global coverage, and having additional satellites in the fleet can improve navigation precision. Today, there are 31 GPS satellites in operational service, flying more than 12,000 miles (20,000 kilometers) above the Earth.
+Another motivation is to replace the oldest active GPS satellites, some of which have been in space since the late 1990s, with newer satellites better suited for the modern world. Beginning in 2005, the military has deployed GPS spacecraft with additional civilian signals for aviation and interoperability with Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites. At the same time, the military introduced a new military-grade signal called M-code, designed for warfare.
+M-code is more resistant to jamming, and its encryption makes it more difficult to spoof, a kind of attack that makes receivers trust fake navigation signals over real ones. The upgrade also allows the military to deny an adversary access to GPS during conflict, while maintaining the ability for US and allied forces to use M-code.
+https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/ula-isnt-making-the-space-forces-gps-interference-problem-any-easier/
@@ Line 4610: / Line 4662: @@
 https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/25/hubble_space_scope_35/
+== Hubble in a death spiral that could end as early as 2028 without a reboost ==
+Orbit decay accelerates as solar activity rises, with no approved mission yet to raise the telescope's altitude
+Richard Speed - Wed 25 Feb 2026 13:22 UTC
+A newly released plot of the Hubble Space Telescope's altitude shows just how quickly the observatory has descended in recent years.
+The post on Bluesky by astronomer Jonathan McDowell is a stark reminder that Hubble is heading back to Earth, possibly sooner than previously thought, as its orbit decays.
+Hubble was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, carried in the payload bay of Space Shuttle Discovery. While it remains capable of pointing its instruments and has returned breathtaking imagery over more than three decades in orbit, it cannot raise its altitude.
+The observatory was serviced by a succession of Space Shuttle crews over the years, and engineers worked around hardware failures as the observatory aged. However, no amount of ground-based cleverness will stop the spacecraft from eventually re-entering the atmosphere.
+The plot from McDowell makes the orbital decay clear. From an initial altitude of more than 600 km, Hubble is now well below 500 km. The more rapid descent in recent years is at least partly due to increased solar activity, which has caused Earth's atmosphere to expand, but it also highlights the need for a reboost in the next few years before the telescope becomes unrecoverable.
+NASA is attempting to rescue the Swift observatory and has paused most science operations after the 21-year-old spacecraft's altitude dropped below 400 km, in order to buy extra time for a reboost mission later this year.
+https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/25/hubble_orbit_decay/
@@ Line 7259: / Line 7332: @@
 https://gizmodo.com/nasa-told-to-overhaul-its-plans-to-replace-the-international-space-station-2000639959
+== The ISS May Live for a Little Bit Longer for a Totally Predictable Reason ==
+Congress instructed NASA to not begin deorbiting the ISS until at least one commercial successor is in space.
+Passant Rabie - March 9, 2026
+The end may not be so near for the International Space Station (ISS), at least not until a privately owned alternative has filled its orbital shoes.
+The U.S. Senate advanced a revised version of a NASA authorization bill, which would delay the retirement of the ISS from 2030 to 2032. The goal of the two-year extension is to “avoid a gap in continuous human presence and capabilities in [low-Earth orbit], thus avoiding ceding leadership to China before commercial stations are ready,” the NASA Authorization Act reads.
+Congress added a sense of urgency toward NASA’s plans of maintaining a human presence in Earth orbit by transitioning to the use of commercial space stations. Despite the ISS retirement scheduled in a few years’ time, the space agency has yet to kick off the final round of a competition among industry leaders to develop their own orbital lab. With no clear alternative in sight, U.S. lawmakers are concerned about whether private companies will be prepared to replace the ISS by 2030.
+https://gizmodo.com/the-iss-may-live-for-a-little-bit-longer-for-a-totally-predictable-reason-2000731283
@@ Line 7899: / Line 7981: @@
 https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/01/heres-the-story-of-how-japans-h3-rocket-lost-its-cargo-and-just-kept-going/
+== Japan Botched a Satellite Launch in One of the Weirdest Ways Possible ==
+Japan's H3 rocket lost its payload fairing around 4 minutes after launch, leaving a satellite exposed and hanging on for dear life.
+Passant Rabie - January 30, 2026
+New details have emerged regarding Japan’s H3 rocket failure last month, revealing the strange way its payload—a navigation satellite—was lost prior to reaching its target orbit.
+Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the seventh mission of its H3 rocket on December 21, 2025, carrying the Michibiki 5 satellite. Shortly after liftoff, the rocket’s second-stage engine suffered an anomaly that caused it to shut down prematurely. JAXA officials recently revealed the root cause of the rocket anomaly: The protective cone-shaped covering that encased the satellite, known as a payload fairing, came apart around 4 minutes after launch. As a result, the satellite was left fighting for its life before it inevitably fell back to Earth.
+https://gizmodo.com/japan-botched-a-satellite-launch-in-one-of-the-weirdest-ways-possible-2000716172
@@ Line 8843: / Line 8939: @@
 https://gizmodo.com/us-declassifies-vintage-spy-satellite-with-a-wildly-lopsided-orbit-2000715963
+== Declassifying JUMPSEAT: an American pioneer in space ==
+Jan. 28, 2026
+The director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) recently declassified the existence of JUMPSEAT: the United States’ first-generation, highly elliptical orbit (HEO) signals-collection satellite.
+Launched from 1971 to 1987 under mission numbers 7701 to 7708, JUMPSEAT was the product of the United States Air Force’s (USAF) program at the NRO. Developed under a program called “Project EARPOP,” JUMPSEAT offered the U.S. a way of collecting intelligence during unprecedented geopolitical change and Cold War tensions that lasted until the early 1990s.
+“The historical significance of JUMPSEAT cannot be understated,” said Dr. James Outzen, NRO director of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance. “Its orbit provided the U.S. a new vantage point for the collection of unique and critical signals intelligence from space.”
+https://www.nro.gov/news-media-featured-stories/news-media-archive/News-Article/Article/4392223/declassifying-jumpseat-an-american-pioneer-in-space/
@@ Line 10276: / Line 10383: @@
 https://spectrum.ieee.org/reconnaissance-satellite
+====== Reflect Orbital ======
+==  Startup Plans April Launch for a Satellite to Reflect Sunlight to Earth at Night ==
+Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday February 28, 2026 07:34AM
+A start-up called Reflect Orbital "proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night," reports the Washington Post, "with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight...."
+Slashdot noted their idea in 2022 — but Reflect Orbital now expects to launch its first satellite in April, according to the article. "But its grand vision is largely 'aspirational,' as its young founder, Ben Nowack, told me..."
+<blockquote>
+Reflect Orbital's Nowack describes a scene right out of sci-fi: An extremely bright star appears on the northern horizon and makes its way across the sky, illuminating a 5-kilometer circle on Earth, then setting on the southern horizon about five minutes later, just as another such "star" appears in the north. To make the night even brighter, a customer could make 10 "stars" appear at once in the north by ordering them on an app. Two such artificial stars are in development in Reflect Orbital's factory. Nowack showed them to me on a Zoom call. The first to launch is 50 feet across, but he plans later to build them three times that size. If all goes according to plan, he'll have 50,000 of them circling the Earth in 2035 at an altitude of around 400 miles.
+</blockquote>
+https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/02/28/076229/startup-plans-april-launch-for-a-satellite-reflect-sunlight-to-earth-at-night
@@ Line 10945: / Line 11072: @@
 https://gizmodo.com/pentagon-angry-about-russias-stalking-satellite-1849402444
+== Russian spy satellites have intercepted EU communications satellites ==
+Unencrypted European communications are being targeted by Moscow.
+Sam Jones, Peggy Hollinger, and Ian Bott, Financial Times – Feb 4, 2026 7:02 AM
+European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent.
+Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them.
+Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the West following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
+For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the West have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2—two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious maneuvers in orbit.
+Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe’s most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East.
+According to orbital data and ground-based telescopic observations, they have lingered nearby for weeks at a time, particularly over the past three years. Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites.
+Both satellites are suspected of “doing sigint [signals intelligence] business,” Major General Michael Traut, head of the German military’s space command, told the Financial Times, referring to the satellites’ practice of staying close to Western communications satellites.
+A senior European intelligence official said the Luch vehicles were almost certainly intended to position themselves within the narrow cone of data beams transmitted from Earth-based stations to the satellites.
+https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/russian-spy-satellites-have-intercepted-eu-communications-satellites/
+== Russian Spy Satellites Have Intercepted EU Communications Satellites ==
+Posted by msmash on Wednesday February 04, 2026 12:46PM
+European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. From a report:
+<blockquote>
+Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them.
+Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the West following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the West have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 -- two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious maneuvers in orbit.
+Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe's most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to orbital data and ground-based telescopic observations, they have lingered nearby for weeks at a time, particularly over the past three years. Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites.
+</blockquote>
+https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/02/04/2046202/russian-spy-satellites-have-intercepted-eu-communications-satellites