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 Technology News | January 2007 
Flexing Muscle, China Destroys Satellite in Test
 William J. Broad & David E. Sanger - NYTimes
| | Visitors look at models of space rockets at the National Museum of China in Beijing, October 2004. China played down fears of a military space race after US spy agencies said it had shot down a satellite for the first time, drawing condemnation from Washington and its Asian allies. (AFP/Peter Parks) |
China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.
Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid-1980s.
Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.
“This is the first real escalation in the weaponization of space that we’ve seen in 20 years,” said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity. “It ends a long period of restraint.”
White House officials said the United States and other nations, which they did not identify, had “expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese.” Despite its protest, the Bush administration has long resisted a global treaty banning such tests because it says it needs freedom of action in space.
Jianhua Li, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said that he had heard about the antisatellite story but that he had no statement or information.
At a time when China is modernizing its nuclear weapons, expanding the reach of its navy and sending astronauts into orbit for the first time, the test appears to mark a new sphere of technical and military competition. American officials complained yesterday that China had made no public or private announcements about its test, despite repeated requests by American officials for more openness about its actions.
The weather satellite hit by the weapon had circled the globe at an altitude of roughly 500 miles. In theory, the test means that China can now hit American spy satellites, which orbit closer to Earth. The satellites presumably in range of the Chinese missile include most of the imagery satellites used for basic military reconnaissance, which are essentially the eyes of the American intelligence community for military movements, potential nuclear tests and even some counterterrorism, and commercial satellites.
Experts said the weather satellite’s speeding remnants could pose a threat to other satellites for years or even decades.
In late August, President Bush authorized a new national space policy that ignored calls for a global prohibition on such tests. The policy said the United States would “preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space” and “dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so.” It declared the United States would “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.”
The Chinese test “could be a shot across the bow,” said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, a private group in Washington that tracks military programs. “For several years, the Russians and Chinese have been trying to push a treaty to ban space weapons. The concept of exhibiting a hard-power capability to bring somebody to the negotiating table is a classic cold war technique.”
Gary Samore, the director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview: “I think it makes perfect sense for the Chinese to do this both for deterrence and to hedge their bets. It puts pressure on the U.S. to negotiate agreements not to weaponize space.”
Ms. Hitchens and other critics have accused the administration of conducting secret research on advanced antisatellite weapons using lasers, which are considered a far speedier and more powerful way of destroying satellites than the weapons of two decades ago.
The White House statement, issued by the National Security Council, said China’s “development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area.”
An administration official who had reviewed the intelligence about China’s test said the launching was detected by the United States in the early evening of Jan. 11, which would have been early morning on Jan. 12 in China. American satellites tracked the launching of the medium-range ballistic missile, and later space radars saw the debris.
The antisatellite test was first reported late Wednesday on the Web site of Aviation Week and Space Technology, an industry magazine. It said intelligence agencies had yet to “complete confirmation of the test.”
The test, the magazine said, appeared to employ a ground-based interceptor that used the sheer force of impact rather than an exploding warhead to shatter the satellite.
Dr. McDowell of Harvard said the satellite was known as Feng Yun, or “wind and cloud.” Launched in 1999, it was the third in a series. He said that it was a cube measuring 4.6 feet on each side, and that its solar panels extended about 28 feet. He added that it was due for retirement but that it still appeared to be electronically alive, making it an ideal target.
“If it stops working,” he said, “you know you have a successful hit.”
David C. Wright, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private group in Cambridge, Mass., said he calculated that the Chinese satellite had shattered into 800 fragments four inches wide or larger, and millions of smaller pieces.
The Soviet Union conducted roughly a dozen antisatellite tests from 1968 to 1982, Dr. McDowell said, adding that the Reagan administration carried out its experiments in 1985 and 1986.
The Bush administration has conducted research that critics say could produce a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would be used against enemy satellites.
The largely secret project, parts of which were made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress last year, appears to be part of a wide-ranging administration effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive.
The administration’s laser research is far more ambitious than a previous effort by the Clinton administration to develop an antisatellite laser, though the administration denies that it is an attempt to build a laser weapon.
The current research takes advantage of an optical technique that uses sensors, computers and flexible mirrors to counteract the atmospheric turbulence that seems to make stars twinkle. The weapon would essentially reverse that process, shooting focused beams of light upward with great clarity and force.
Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a group that studies national security, called the Chinese test very un-Chinese.
“There’s nothing subtle about this,” he said. “They’ve created a huge debris cloud that will last a quarter century or more. It’s at a higher elevation than the test we did in 1985, and for that one the last trackable debris took 17 years to clear out.”
Mr. Krepon added that the administration had long argued that the world needed no space-weapons treaty because no such arms existed and because the last tests were two decades ago. “It seems,” he said, “that argument is no longer operative.”
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting. |
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