Iranian Space program

[arashkamangir]

Either its the first ever release in history of 10cm class satellite imagery at a steep angle. Or they had something flying there.
Provocative move.

I still don't buy this was a sabotage. Mechanical/Electrical failure is more likely. The bafoon is using this as a political win against the RQ-4...

 

[Smarana Mitra]

I still don't buy this was a sabotage. Mechanical/Electrical failure is more likely. The bafoon is using this as a political win against the RQ-4...

Trump is showing Iran that he can take close up image of the interior site despite Iranian effort to shoot down drones.
I also have similar like of thought as you about Trump trying to tease Iran about rq4

 

[aryobarzan]

Only way to thwart this is with low tech idea, we need 3 launch pads with 3 rockets prepped at the same time, 2 will be decoys, or we will need to move the launch underground.

Reflective coatings on the Slv. Lunch in cloudy or dusty days to maximize scattering of laser beam..insulation of fuel tanks from focused beam...multiple decoy lunch pad as you mentioned...and similar laser weapons aimed at the source of the laser.
Giving up is not an option...a challenge has been issued and we should meet it.

 

[Battle of Waterloo]

US recon sats are known to have 9cm resolution for a long time and rumoured to have 6cm today.

Can't Iran track US satellites and adjust launch timings accordingly...?

 

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Safir-1-e-Nahid SLV Disappeared!


Donald J. Trump ‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 2h

The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1167493371973255170

http://web.archive.org/web/20190830194708/https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDPFB_XWkAY6QWB.jpg ; https://archive.is/WODC7/d0358b58988bc6f8efc912e16b7141259929f652.jpg
▲ 1. Trump wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.

President Trump Tweets Sensitive Surveillance Image of Iran

August 30, 2019

President Trump has tweeted what experts say is almost certainly an image from a classified satellite or drone, showing the aftermath of an accident at an Iranian space facility.

"The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir [Space Launch Vehicle] Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran," the president said in a tweet that accompanied the image on Friday. "I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One."


NPR broke the news of the launch failure on Thursday, using images from commercial satellites that flew over Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center. Those images showed smoke billowing from the pad. Iran has since acknowledged an accident occurred at the site.

Some of the highest-resolution imagery available commercially comes from the company Maxar, whose WorldView-2 satellite sports 46-centimeter resolution.

But the image shown in the president's tweet appears to be of far better quality, says Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, who specializes in analyzing satellite imagery. "The resolution is amazingly high," says Panda. "I would think it's probably below well below 20 centimeters, which is much higher than anything I've ever seen."

Panda says that the tweet discloses "some pretty amazing capabilities that the public simply wasn't privy to before this."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions about the image to the White House, which declined to comment.

The image shows the aftermath of the accident, which experts believe took place while the rocket was being fueled. Clearly visible is the truck used to transport and erect the rocket, and the words "The product of national empowerment," which have been written along the edge of the pad. The picture also shows extensive debris and charring around the pad.

It was not entirely clear where the president's photo came from. Panda believes it was most likely taken by a classified U.S. satellite. But Melissa Hanham, deputy director of the Open Nuclear Network at the One Earth Foundation, believes that the resolution is so high, it may be beyond the physical limits at which satellites can operate. "The atmosphere is thick enough that after somewhere around 11 to 9 centimeters, things get wonky," she says.

That could mean it was taken by a drone or spy plane, though such a vehicle would be violating Iranian airspace. Hanham also says that the European company Airbus has been experimenting with drones that fly so high, they are technically outside the atmosphere and thus operating outside national boundaries. But she says she doesn't know whether the U.S. has such a system.

Glare in the center of the image suggest the image in the tweet was itself a photo of a briefing slide. Panda suggests it could have been displayed on a computer screen in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It's also possible it was a photo of a piece of paper.

Either way, Panda notes that a small redaction in the upper left-hand corner suggests the intelligence community had cleared the image for release by the president.

But both he and Hanham question whether releasing it was a good idea. "You really risk giving away the way you know things," Hanham says. "That allows people to adapt and hide how they carry out illicit activity."

"These are closely held national secrets," Panda adds. "We don't even share a lot of this kind of imagery with our closest allies." In tweeting it out to the world, Trump is letting Iran know exactly what the U.S. is capable of. He's also letting others know as well, Panda says. "The Russians and the Chinese, you're letting them know that these are the kind of things that the United States has the capability of seeing," he says.



https://www.npr.org/2019/08/30/7559...ve-surveillance-image-of-iran?t=1567199965817
​

The Safir SLV can not be seen in the image. Damages to the gantry service tower are too extensive to allow another launch attemp in the coming weeks.

 

[Smarana Mitra]

Reconnaissance satellites have orbital period of 90 minutes. Satellite assembly had much more time requirement. But as i have mentioned before, satellite launcher is toughened material and laser can't penetrate it. If laser can penetrate it, it means that the SLV is not toughened and then the slv will fail due to high heating while launching air friction regardless of sabotage

US recon sats are known to have 9cm resolution for a long time and rumoured to have 6cm today.

Can't Iran track US satellites and adjust launch timings accordingly...?

 

[Ich]

The picture is computer generated.

 

[Battle of Waterloo]

Reconnaissance satellites have orbital period of 90 minutes. Satellite assembly had much more time requirement. But as i have mentioned before, satellite launcher is toughened material and laser can't penetrate it. If laser can penetrate it, it means that the SLV is not toughened and then the slv will fail due to high heating while launching air friction regardless of sabotage

The 90 mins orbital period might explain why in the photo the SLV appears to have been removed from the stand in the US photo

 

[arashkamangir]

This reeks of sabotage, they're probably using a satellite with a laser system. How else is this possible, there is NY Times article a few months back about a bunch of officials crowing about it....I don't think this is counterfeit or bogus parts in the supply chain, I think this is a killer satellite parked above the launch zone. Please tell me I'm imagining things because I didn't think anyone had that capability

@Kastor, assumptions need to be backed up physics and cost benefit analysis. What you are suggesting is improbable:

1. Satellites cannot hover by definition, they orbit. Spacecrafts with active thrusters can but require to burn fuel to main altitude. They also need to preserve fuel for return to home maneuvers. Unless you are referring to geostationary orbit, then 'hovering' is an inaccurate term. The only known candidate for a vehicle that could fire a LASER with persistence is the X-37.

2. Lasers scatter due to atmospheric effects, the scattering is a function of the lasers frequency. Adoptive optics are designed and requires to actively tune the laser to maintain optimal performance depending on atmospheric effects. Lasers also are a heat management nightmare. There are no known lasers that can fire persistently and all known lasers have a limited range and well under 50 KM range otherwise why would you invest in THAAD. The current lasers utilized are big and have fraction of performance needed to destroy from 200-300 km distance. This means they won't fit in X-37 platform nevermind the thermal management in a super low density environment of LEO.

3. Iran since Ahmadinejad era has shown capabilities to detect and track satellites.
Take a look at the picture attached for reference. This means Iran has early warning and accordingly schedule launches or abort them.

You can always sift through bullshit and pseudo science with science and Occam's razor.

Space Launch Vehicles and their payloads are super complex machines. There are literally thousands of point of failures awaiting to fail.you are not just launching a rocket, you need to maintain low vibration for payloads safety, control acceleration, control static charge build up, properly manuever the payload to orbit and then additional complexities pop up when it comes to payload delivery mechanism... We are talking about system complexities stack on top of other systems complexities stacked on top of other layers of systems complexities. Even if you have engineered everything to perfection, a simple human mistake or misjudgment can create catastrophe. Iran is maturing in this field and it's not just about engineering but also this field requires maturity in protocols and procedures design and implementation (ex: assembly and QA) .

So it is far likely that this was human error.

 

[Battle of Waterloo]

Either its the first ever release in history of 10cm class satellite imagery at a steep angle. Or they had something flying there.
Provocative move.

Seems like satellite image:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1167514988036218880

 

[Kastor]

@Kastor, assumptions need to be backed up physics and cost benefit analysis. What you are suggesting is improbable:

1. Satellites cannot hover by definition, they orbit. Spacecrafts with active thrusters can but require to burn fuel to main altitude. They also need to preserve fuel for return to home maneuvers. Unless you are referring to geostationary orbit, then 'hovering' is an inaccurate term. The only known candidate for a vehicle that could fire a LASER with persistence is the X-37.

2. Lasers scatter due to atmospheric effects, the scattering is a function of the lasers frequency. Adoptive optics are designed and requires to actively tune the laser to maintain optimal performance depending on atmospheric effects. Lasers also are a heat management nightmare. There are no known lasers that can fire persistently and all known lasers have a limited range and well under 50 KM range otherwise why would you invest in THAAD. The current lasers utilized are big and have fraction of performance needed to destroy from 200-300 km distance. This means they won't fit in X-37 platform nevermind the thermal management in a super low density environment of LEO.

3. Iran since Ahmadinejad era has shown capabilities to detect and track satellites.
Take a look at the picture attached for reference. This means Iran has early warning and accordingly schedule launches or abort them.

You can always sift through bullshit and pseudo science with science and Occam's razor.

Space Launch Vehicles and their payloads are super complex machines. There are literally thousands of point of failures awaiting to fail.you are not just launching a rocket, you need to maintain low vibration for payloads safety, control acceleration, control static charge build up, properly manuever the payload to orbit and then additional complexities pop up when it comes to payload delivery mechanism... We are talking about system complexities stack on top of other systems complexities stacked on top of other layers of systems complexities. Even if you have engineered everything to perfection, a simple human mistake or misjudgment can create catastrophe. Iran is maturing in this field and it's not just about engineering but also this field requires maturity in protocols and procedures design and implementation (ex: assembly and QA) .

So it is far likely that this was human error.

Thanks, that makes me feel a little better, I wasn't sure of sabotage but the failure rate does seem high. Thanks for the detailed post.

 

[aryobarzan]

@Kastor, assumptions need to be backed up physics and cost benefit analysis. What you are suggesting is improbable:

1. Satellites cannot hover by definition, they orbit. Spacecrafts with active thrusters can but require to burn fuel to main altitude. They also need to preserve fuel for return to home maneuvers. Unless you are referring to geostationary orbit, then 'hovering' is an inaccurate term. The only known candidate for a vehicle that could fire a LASER with persistence is the X-37.

2. Lasers scatter due to atmospheric effects, the scattering is a function of the lasers frequency. Adoptive optics are designed and requires to actively tune the laser to maintain optimal performance depending on atmospheric effects. Lasers also are a heat management nightmare. There are no known lasers that can fire persistently and all known lasers have a limited range and well under 50 KM range otherwise why would you invest in THAAD. The current lasers utilized are big and have fraction of performance needed to destroy from 200-300 km distance. This means they won't fit in X-37 platform nevermind the thermal management in a super low density environment of LEO.

3. Iran since Ahmadinejad era has shown capabilities to detect and track satellites.
Take a look at the picture attached for reference. This means Iran has early warning and accordingly schedule launches or abort them.

You can always sift through bullshit and pseudo science with science and Occam's razor.

Space Launch Vehicles and their payloads are super complex machines. There are literally thousands of point of failures awaiting to fail.you are not just launching a rocket, you need to maintain low vibration for payloads safety, control acceleration, control static charge build up, properly manuever the payload to orbit and then additional complexities pop up when it comes to payload delivery mechanism... We are talking about system complexities stack on top of other systems complexities stacked on top of other layers of systems complexities. Even if you have engineered everything to perfection, a simple human mistake or misjudgment can create catastrophe. Iran is maturing in this field and it's not just about engineering but also this field requires maturity in protocols and procedures design and implementation (ex: assembly and QA) .

So it is far likely that this was human error.

Let's hope what you say about thousand points of failure or mismanagement of fueling procedures or or any other cause related to assembly or design is indeed true. However if sabotage from space is involved we are in a totally new ball game..now analysing trumps last sentence regarding.."good luck finding the cause..." and him designating space warfare head yesterday..too much of a coincidence for me....but.. Time will tell...Iranians are quiet so far so they must be looking hard these what happened..

 

[arashkamangir]

Let's hope what you say about thousand points of failure or mismanagement of fueling procedures or or any other cause related to assembly or design in indeed true. However if sabotage from space is involved we are in a totally new ball game..now analysing trumps last sentence regarding.."good luck finding the cause..." and him designating space warfare head yesterday..too much of a coincidence for me....but.. Time will tell...Iranians are quiet so far so they must be looking hard these what happened..

Trump is a shortsighted opportunitist moron. He has had no political win, even Fox new has turned on him. Also he is the world's biggest lier.

I laid out why a space strike with a laser is highly unlikely. At this point, i appreciate science based counter arguments and if quantitatively you can solidify your argument, then we have learned something.

 

[Kastor]

I'm not sure what secret they're talking about.....we all know they have very precise spy satellite.
Trump may have revealed US military secrets by tweeting a photo to taunt Iran
https://www.businessinsider.com/tru...aled-us-military-secrets-taunting-iran-2019-8

 

[like_a_boss]

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