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Western Analysts Skeptical about North Korea's Satellite Claims

By Marcia Smith | Posted: April 11, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: April 11, 2012 7:04 pm ET

Veteran space analyst Jim Oberg, who serves as a consultant for NBC News, has been part of the foreign journalist corps allowed on site to see the rocket and spacecraft North Korea intends to launch in the next few days. The spacecraft is not what he expected, he said in an interview for NBC, and the rocket is much more than is needed to launch it. Meanwhile, other western analysts are skeptical that the satellite really is headed for a sun-synchronous orbit as North Korea states.

Oberg has worked in the U.S. space program for decades, including many years as a contractor at NASA’s Johnson Space Center working on space shuttle orbital rendezvous oeprations. In the NBC interview, he explained that he expected the Kwangmyongsong 3 (Bright Star 3) satellite — a weather satellite according to North Korean officials — to be in a clean room and probably already mounted to the rocket’s third stage. Instead, he and other journalists were allowed to walk right up to it: “The problem is the North Koreans didn’t just let us in [to the same room as the satellite], they let us get much too close. I could’ve walked three steps and poked it with my finger.” Adding that at first he thought it was model, not the flight article, he was surprised they would allow people who had just arrived from a long road trip and were covered in dust so close. “Maybe the satellite is built to be rugged; maybe they don’t care. We’ll find out if they launch it, if it works or not.” As for the Unha-3 rocket, “it’s bigger than it has to be.”

Separately, some western space analysts are expressing skepticism that the satellite actually is intended to be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit. It is a challenge to achieve such an orbit from North Korea’s launch site on the east coast of the country. Bob Christy at zarya.info has posted a representation of the trajectory based on a screen grab from North Korean television, with an additional line showing the modified trajectory that it would have to follow to achieve sun-synchronous orbit. He quotes Jonathan McDowell of Jonathan’s Space Report as calculating that the third stage would have to yaw “through something in the region of 50º before ignition,” something Christy calls “ambitious.”

Ted Molczcan, a highly respected amateur visual satellite observer in Canada who often posts on the SeeSat-L listserv, went so far as to tell Wired’s Danger Room that he believes “the most reasonable interpretation is that they are lying about this being a satellite launch, which has been betrayed by the incompetence of their propagandists in over-reaching their cover story.”

North Korea has stated it will conduct the launch to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of their country’s founder, Kim Il-sung, which is on April 15. Some reports suggest the launch will take place sometime between Thursday and Monday, but an exact launch date and time is not yet available. Kim Il-sung is the grandfather of North Korea’s current president, Kim Jong-un. The United States and other countries are strongly opposed to the launch, which they consider to be a missile test, not a satellite launch, that violates two United Nations Security Council resolutions and a recent U.S.-North Korea agreement.

Last Updated: Apr 11, 2012 7:04 pm ET

In Case You Missed It: AAS Goddard Symposium and SWF Conference Presentations Available

By Marcia Smith | Posted: April 10, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: April 10, 2012 10:23 pm ET

Video or audio recordings of two recent space policy-related conferences are now available on the Web.

Video from the American Astronautical Society’s 50th Goddard Memorial Symposium, held March 28-29, 2012 in Greenbelt, MD, is now posted on NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) website. Video of all the presentations is available, including remarks by —

Christopher Scolese, GSFC Director;
Charlie Bolden, NASA Administrator;
Steve Squyres, chairman of the NASA Advisory Council;
House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX);
Kathy Sullivan, Deputy Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); and
Rear Admiral Liz Young, National Reconnaissance Office

Audio recordings of the Space Security Conference 2012 sponsored by the Secure World Foundation (SWF) and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), held March 29-20, 2012 in Geneva, Switzerland, are also available. Included are presentations from —

Victoria Samson, Director of SWF’s Washington Office;
Theresa Hitchens, Director of UNIDIR;
Peter Marquez, former Director of Space Policy for the White House National Security Council and currently Vice President for Space Strategy and Planning, Orbital Sciences Corp.;
Frank Rose, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Defense Policy;
John Sheldon, professor of Space and Cyberspace Srategy at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base;
Victor Vasiliev, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Office in Geneva; and
Haitao WU, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary for Disarmament Affairs and Deputy Permanent Representative for the Peoples Republic of China to the U.N. Office at Geneva.

Editor’s Note: The video of my closing remarks to the AAS Goddard Memorial Symposium on March 28 is also available on the GSFC site.

Last Updated: Apr 10, 2012 10:23 pm ET

North Korea Readies for Provocative Satellite Launch

By Marcia Smith | Posted: April 10, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: April 10, 2012 11:24 pm ET

North Korea continues its preparations to launch a satellite in the next several days to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of the country’s founder despite strong objections by the United States and other countries. The launch is anticipated between Thursday and Monday.

The United States and other countries have made clear that such a launch would violate two United Nations Security Council resolutions and is a provocative act that will result in consequences if North Korea proceeds.

For its part, North Korea insists that it is the launch of a remote sensing satellite in the pursuit of peaceful uses of outer space. It has opened the launch to foreign journalists who have been posting news stories for the past several days. White House National Security Council staffer Tommy Vietor rebuked the journalists, telling Politico’s Dylan Byers that “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know this is a propaganda exercise. … Reporters have to be careful not to get co-opted.” Vietor went on to say that the foreign news corps was being restricted to seeing only “military hardware. They’re not allowing them to tour the countryside and see the people who are starving.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking today at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, hinted at concerns that the missile launch could be just the first of other threats North Korea might pose, including the possibility of another nuclear weapons test. She said the United States is working with other countries, including Russia, China, Japan and South Korea to convince North Korea that “true security will only come from living up to its commitments and obligations, first and foremost to their own people.”

The United States and North Korea signed an agreement on February 29 — the “Leap Day Deal” — in which the United States agreed to provide food assistance in return for North Korea participating in negotiations to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and meeting its international obligations. Part of the agreement required North Korea to refrain from conducting launches that use ballistic missile technology, but just two weeks later, on March 16, North Korea announced that it would launch a satellite to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the April 15, 1912 birth of Kim Il-sung, the country’s first leader and grandfather of its current president Kim Jong-un.

The U.S. Government has made clear that if North Korea proceeds with the launch, violating that agreement as well as United Nations resolutions 1718 and 1874 that also prohibit North Korea from conducting launches that use ballistic missile technology, it would be difficult to provide the food assistance since it would be apparent that North Korean officials could not be trusted to fulfill agreements.

The New York Times reports that North Korea notified international aviation authorities that the rocket’s first stage would land in the ocean 90 nautical miles off Kunsan, South Korea and the second stand would drop in the ocean east of the Philippines.

Last Updated: Apr 10, 2012 11:24 pm ET

China Releases "Crucial" Report About Its Navigation Satellite System Following U.S.-China Workshop

By Marcia Smith | Posted: April 3, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: April 3, 2012 5:57 pm ET

In December 2011, China released a “crucial” report providing information about its civil satellite navigation signals following a workshop sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The report of the workshop was released by the NAE today.

Several countries have or are developing satellite systems that provide positioning, navigation, and timing data –or Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). The United States operates the Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia has GLONASS, Europe is developing Galileo, and China is developing BeiDou (Compass). Japan and India also are launching regional (rather than global) systems.

In May 2011, the NAE and its Chinese counterpart held a workshop in China to discuss matters of mutual interest about navigation satellite systems. The workshop’s goal was to “promote technical and policy-related cooperation between the United States and China regarding their respective navigation satellite systems … to the benefit of China, the United States, and other GNSS users worldwide,” according to the NAE report.

One hurdle was that little information was known publicly about China’s system. In December, seven months after the workshop and just before the workshop report went to press, China released a “crucial” document with information about its civil navigation signals, the report states in its preface. The preface was written by three prominent navigation satellite experts who participated in the workshop — Bradford Parkinson of Stanford University (often called the father of GPS); Per Enge, also of Stanford; and Liu Jingnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

They added that “[t]he recent exchange of data will improve the accuracy and availability of real-time position, navigation and time data for all users worldwide. This exchange will foster interchangeability of satellite signals, which will greatly decrease outages” for users whose view of the sky is impaired by mountains, tall buildings, or other obstructions.

Last Updated: Apr 03, 2012 5:57 pm ET

House Passes Ryan Budget

By Marcia Smith | Posted: March 30, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: March 30, 2012 8:53 am ET

The House of Representatives passed the budget plan sponsored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) yesterday, which would impose deeper cuts to the federal budget in FY2013 and future years than agreed to last year in the Budget Control Act (BCA).

President Obama’s FY2013 budget request was premised on the top-line number that was adopted in the BCA — $1.047 trillion. The Ryan plan reduces that to $1.028 trillion and protects funding for the Department of Defense (DOD).

The BCA was passed after long and difficult negotiations between Republicans and Democrats, the House and Senate, and Congress and the President. Democrats contend that the BCA settled the issue of how much money could be spent in FY2013, but House Republicans decided to fight for less spending.

The funding figures in the Ryan plan are likely to mean less funding for NASA and NOAA, which are part of “non-defense discretionary” spending.

The Senate has not passed a budget resolution yet.

Politico has an interesting analysis of the impact the Ryan budget will have on many government programs. It does not discuss space activities specifically, but provides a useful perspective, including the following:

“For Obama, the cuts demanded from nondefense appropriations are at least $27 billion more than he would have assumed after the summer talks. And by the end of 2014, the plan anticipates that nondefense discretionary spending would fall to $406 billion, a reduction of $100 billion, or nearly 20 percent.

“When adjusted for inflation, that would leave most agencies with less money than they received at any time under President George W. Bush. And the cut is proportionally larger than any reduction Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich achieved at the height of their powers in the ’80s and ’90s.”

Last Updated: Mar 30, 2012 8:53 am ET

Events of Interest: Week of March 26-30, 2012

By Marcia Smith | Posted: March 25, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: March 25, 2012 11:37 am ET

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead.

The House and Senate both are in session this week.

Tuesday, March 27

SASC Hearing on U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Cyber Command, 106 Dirksen, 9:30 am ET

Tuesday-Thursday, March 27-29

American Astronautical Society Annual Goddard Memorial Symposium, Greenbelt Marriott, Greenbelt, MD

Wednesday, March 28

Institute of Medicine Cmte on Review of NASA Human Research Program Scientific Merit Assessment Process, 20 F Street, NW, Washington, DC, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm ET
House SS&T Committee Hearing on International Space Station Utilization, 2318 Rayburn, 9:30 am ET
Senate Appropriations CJS Subcommittee Hearing on FY2013 NASA Budget Request, 126 Dirksen, 2:00 pm ET
House SS&T Subcommittee Hearing on How NOAA Procures Data for Weather Forecasting, 2318 Rayburn, 2:00 pm ET
NASA Technology Day on the Hill, 2168 Rayburn, 3:00-7:00 pm ET

Wednesday-Friday, March 28-30

National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Reusable Booster System, Keck Center, 500 5th St., NW, Washington DC

Thursday-Friday, March 29-30

Secure World Foundation-UNIDIR Space Security Conference 2012, Geneva, Switzerland

Last Updated: Mar 25, 2012 11:37 am ET

Senators Cool To Space Code of Conduct; GAO Praises DOD on Acquisition Progress

By Marcia Smith | Posted: March 23, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: March 23, 2012 6:54 pm ET

A large panel of witnesses from the Department of Defense (DOD), the three military services, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC’s) Strategic Forces Subcommittee on Wednesday on an array of space issues, but the wisdom of negotiating a Code of Conduct for space activities was center stage. At the same time, GAO, usually a strong critic of DOD’s management and acquisition of space systems, praised DOD on its progress in changing the paradigm.

Subcommittee chairman Ben Nelson (D-NE) and ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the only Senators present, both made clear their reservations about negotiating a Code of Conduct for space — an agreement they believe could limit what the United States does in space and thus harm national security. Madelyn Creedon, a former SASC committee staffer and now Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs, assured the Senators that the Code of Conduct would be a voluntary agreement, not a treaty, and would not limit U.S. options. It is all about “behavior, not capabilities,” she stressed.

The European Union (EU) drafted a Code of Conduct whose objective is to define responsible behavior for space-faring nations. The idea is that countries cannot be criticized for poor behavior if good behavior has not been defined. The perceived need for such a Code of Conduct is being spurred by two events that created a substantial amount of space debris — China’s intentional destruction of one of its own satellites in a 2007 antisatellite test and the 2009 unintentional collision of a U.S. commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite. Key goals of the draft Code is convincing countries and commercial entities to refrain from creating more debris and establishing mechanisms to improve space situational awareness (SSA) so everyone knows where everyone else’s satellites are.

Opponents of the effort to develop a Code of Conduct assert that it is a backhanded way of creating an arms control treaty for outer space. Russia and China have been attempting for years through the United Nations Committee on Disarmament to establish a space arms control treaty, without success. Both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations have steadfastly refused to negotiate such a treaty, although discussions are OK.

However, the U.S. is willing to negotiate a non-binding, voluntary Code of Conduct that is not a treaty but a useful mechanism to deal with space debris and SSA. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in January that the United States will work with Europe and other countries to finalize such a Code. The U.S. position is that many more countries need to be brought into the discussion. The EU will sponsor meetings to broaden the debate. Creedon said at the hearing that the first “meeting of experts” would be in June and she anticipates it will take one or two years to finalize an agreement. Other officials have suggested an even longer time period.

At the hearing, Senators Nelson and Sessions acknowledged that this is a State Department issue over which their subcommittee has no jurisdiction. Nonetheless they sought and received assurances that the Senate would be consulted before any agreement was signed. The Senate must provide advice and consent to ratification of any treaty, but since this is not a treaty, its role in approving or disapproving it is unclear. Sessions said that Congress is “interested and watching” what the Administration does.

Other topics that were discussed extensively was the decision to terminate the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) and Space Test Program (STP), how to lower the cost of launching satellites and bring new entrants into the marketplace, how to protect spectrum used by DOD, and how to assure that ground systems and user equipment associated with a satellite program are ready when the satellite is launched.

GAO, which usually has a long list of criticisms of DOD space acquisition, focused on the ground systems/user equipment issue this year. Cristina Chaplain, GAO’s director of acquisition and sourcing management, noted how much has changed with regard to DOD space programs in the past few years. “If I were here five years ago,” she said, “I would be talking about all the major programs having very large cost increases and schedule delays….resistance to implementing best practices…and lax oversight.” Some space programs still have problems, she continued, but not to the same extent.

One of the major concerns today is that ground systems and user equipment are not ready when satellites are launched. “We’re seeing too many programs [where] the user equipment is just arriving years later than the satellites and you really have a situation where you’re wasting expensive capacity in space when that happens,” she said. The Navy’s Multiple User Objective System (MUOS) was cited as an example today, and GPS III is of concern for the future.

Prepared statement of Hon. Madelyn Creedon, Asst SecDef for Global Strategic Affairs
Prepared statement of Dr. John Zangardi, Dep Asst Sec of the Navy for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Information Operations, and Space
Prepared statement of Dr. Robert Winokur, Navy Director of Oceanography, Space and Maritime Domain Awareness
Prepared statement of Gen. William Shelton, Commander, Air Force Space Command
Prepared statement of Lt. Gen. Richard P. Formica, Commander, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command
Prepared statement of Cristina Chaplain, GAO Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management
Webcast

Last Updated: Mar 23, 2012 6:54 pm ET

Ryan Budget Would Cut More From NASA, NOAA Budget Functions

By Marcia Smith | Posted: March 21, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: March 21, 2012 11:04 am ET

A Washington Post analysis of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) FY2013 budget plan released yesterday shows that the part of the budget that includes NASA would be cut six percent more than the budget proposed by President Obama over the next 10 years. Significant cuts to the part of the budget that includes NOAA also are proposed. Overall, the Ryan plan protects defense spending, but makes deeper cuts overall to the federal budget than what was agreed to last year in the Budget Control Act.

Ryan is chairman of the House Budget Committee and released his budget plan yesterday as a “chairman’s mark.” A table at the end of the chairman’s mark lays out the proposed budget levels by year through 2022 for the approximately 20 budget functions into which government activities are grouped by the congressional budget committees and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The Washington Post analysis compared the numbers in the Ryan plan with those published in OMB’s comparable table from the President’s FY2013 budget request.

Because the budget functions are broad, it is not possible to determine how much would eventually be allocated to any specific agency or activity — that would be determined through appropriations action each year — but the numbers do provide a cap for those budget functions and indicate relative priorities.

All of NASA’s activities except aeronautics are in function 250 — General Science, Space and Technology. That category also includes the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s science programs. For FY2013, the Ryan plan calls for allocating $28 billion, down from $29.1 billion in FY2012. The Obama budget calls for $29.5 billion in FY2013. Over the 10-year period, the Washington Post says the total for function 250 is six percent less in the Ryan budget.

NASA’s aeronautics programs are in function 400, Transportation, which is slated for an even steeper cut over the 10-year period, 25 percent, under the Ryan plan according to the Washington Post’s analysis.

NOAA’s programs are in function 300, Natural Resources and Environment, along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a range of conservation and natural resources programs. In the near term, function 300 would be 14.6 percent lower in 2014 in the Ryan budget according to the Washington Post. It quotes David Kendall of The Third Way as warning about the potential impact on weather forecasting: “‘Our weather forecasts would be only half as accurate for four to eight years until another polar satellite is launched,’ estimates Kendall. ‘For many people planning a weekend outdoors, they may have to wait until Thursday for a forecast as accurate as one they now get on Monday. … Perhaps most affected would be hurricane response. Governors and mayors would have to order evacuations for areas twice as large or wait twice as long for an accurate forecast.'”

The House is expected to pass the Ryan plan next week. Senate Democrats are insisting that Republicans stick to the plan that was enacted into law last year in the Budget Control Act. That set $1.047 trillion as the total federal budget for FY2013. The Ryan budget lowers that to $1.028 trillion.

Last Updated: Mar 21, 2012 11:04 am ET

House Republicans Roll Out New Budget Plan Today

By Marcia Smith | Posted: March 20, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: March 20, 2012 9:40 am ET

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will reveal the House Republicans’ FY2013 budget today on Capitol Hill at 10:30 am ET. He will answer questions at 11:30 am ET at the American Enterprise Institute, which will webcast that event.

Ryan wrote an op-ed for today’s Wall Street Journal that outlines the plan. Its main themes are to cut taxes and reduce federal spending, including changes to Medicare, while at the same time negating the “sequestration” for defense programs required under the Budget Control Act (BCA) passed last summer. Sequestration also applies to non-defense spending, but protecting non-defense spending (such as NASA or NOAA) is rarely mentioned.

After a contentious battle that almost led to the government defaulting on its debts, Republicans and Democrats passed the BCA in August 2011. It is the law that set up the “congressional supercommittee” that failed to reach agreement last fall, meaning that the back-up plan, across-the-board cuts to all federal spending beginning on January 1, 2013 — otherwise known as sequestration — is the law of the land at the moment. Sequestration was included in the law as a poison pill because of its dire consequences, especially for the defense budget, and politicians on both sides of the aisle are looking for a way out.

The BCA also set the total federal government spending level for FY2013 — referred to as a “cap.” Ordinarily, the House and the Senate each pass budgets and then reach a compromise on what the spending cap is for each fiscal year. From that, they allocate specific amounts to each of the 12 appropriations subcommittees, which then decide how much each department or agency gets. Since the cap for FY2013 already was set in the BCA, strictly speaking there is no need for a budget resolution this year. However, House Republicans apparently to want to change the deal and lower the cap.

For their part, two top Senate Democrats, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI), wrote a letter to the House leadership yesterday warning them not to renege on the amount agreed to for FY2013 in the BCA — $1.047 trillion. Nonetheless, the Ryan plan reportedly lowers that cap to $1.028 trillion while protecting spending for defense.

Fundamentally, both parties are sticking to their positions on how to reduce the deficit. Republicans want spending cuts only, no tax increases; Democrats want spending cuts and tax hikes for the wealthiest individuals.

Politico says that Democrats consider the Ryan plan “Christmas in March” because they believe voters will reject it, especially because of its impact on Medicare, and plan to release their own budget proposal next week. Republicans apparently are counting on a chart they prepared to win voters to their side. The chart, published in Ryan’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, shows President Obama’s very long-term budget — through the year 2080 — dramatically increasing federal debt while the Ryan plan reduces it to zero by 2050.

Last Updated: Mar 20, 2012 9:40 am ET

Events of Interest: Week of March 18-23, 2012

By Marcia Smith | Posted: March 18, 2012 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: April 19, 2013 5:04 am ET

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. They include a segment scheduled to air tonight (Sunday) on 60 Minutes about Elon Musk and SpaceX.