Free Republic

The US military has raised concerns about the mysterious Russian launch They found five orbital bodies leaving the rocket instead of four, as suggested Either rocket's upper stage broke, or Russia had kept part of the launch secret The US military has raised concerns about the mysterious Russian launch after they found five orbital bodies leaving the rocket instead of four, as previously suggested. The US Combined Space Operations Centre (CSpOC) believe that either the rocket's upper stage broke in two, or the Russians had kept part of the launch secret.

The United States and China both used advanced missiles to blow up their own satellites in a mutual show of military strength, documents published in Thursday's Telegraph newspaper showed. The memos, leaked by the WikiLeaks website, revealed that the US responded to China's 2007 destruction of a weather satellite by blowing up its own malfunctioning satellite in a "test" strike. The US insisted at the time that it undertook the operation to prevent the satellite returning to earth with a toxic fuel tank which would pose a health hazard. A leaked cable sent from the US embassy in Beijing in...

Call it a reusable space vehicle. Call it a space plane. But whatever you do, just don’t call it a space weapon. That’s the message from the Air Force after last week’s launch of its X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, which can stay on orbit up to 270 days. The Air Force won’t say what, exactly, the robotic space plane will be doing there, how long it will linger this time, or even how much it costs. But the military is already in the process of building a second aircraft, which will fly next year. Officially the Air Force has described...

Criticizing China's test of an anti-satellite weapon, the U.S. State Department said Friday "modern life as we know it" depends on the security of space-based technology. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said the administration raised concerns about the test with Chinese officials in Washington and in Beijing, making clear its opposition to "any militarization of space." He said tests of the kind China carried out "produce extensive amounts of space debris, have the potential for disturbing or accidentally disrupting communication satellites or other kinds of space vehicles that are out there." A report released Friday by a U.S. congressional...