DIA: China to Deploy ASAT Laser by 2020

China’s President Xi Jinping / Getty Images

 

China, Russia also set to use anti-satellite missiles

China’s military is expected to deploy a laser weapon capable of destroying or damaging U.S. military satellites in low earth orbit in the next year, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed in a report on space threats.

The Chinese directed energy weapon is among an array of space warfare tools that include ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles, electronic jammers, cyber attacks, and small satellites Beijing plans to use in attacks on U.S. satellites in a future conflict.

Is This Why China Went To The Dark Side Of The Moon?

 

China has embarked on an ambitious space program – surpassing the United States in orbital launches last year (primarily for satellites), and now landing their own lunar rover on the dark side of the moon, the Chang’e 4.

The stated purpose of Beijing’s robotic lander is to collect samples and identify what minerals are there. And while the Chang’e 4 is unlikely to find precious metals such as gold, silver or platinum – there may be something up there that could serve as a “lunar fuel station to the stars,” as the South China Morning Post puts it; Helium-3

Russia’s Pivoting To The Horn Of Africa Via Eritrea & The UAE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Eritrea’s Foreign Minister Osman Saleh, August 31, 2018, Sochi, Russia

 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded his country’s relationship with Eritrea and informed the world about Moscow’s plans to build a logistics center there.

He was speaking alongside his Eritrean counterpart at a press conference in Sochi after their bilateral meeting, which he also noted included discussions about building regional transport corridors, pipelines, and opening up a Russian language department in one of Asmara’s universities. Lavrov also said that the UNSC sanctions against Eritrea that were imposed in 2009 after reports that the country was aiding Somalia’s Al-Shaabab should be lifted, and he praised Eritrea for all that it’s done in the name of regional peace over the past few months in view of its rapidly moving rapprochement with Ethiopia that completely transformed the geopolitical situation in the Horn of Africa.

China Has a Plan to Beat the U.S. in Space

Astronauts Chen Dong, left, and Jing Haipeng at a ceremony prior to the launch of the Shenzhou 11. (Photographer: Li Jin/VCG via Getty Images)

 

The launch of the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft in western China last month marked another great leap forward for the nation’s space program and its ambition to send manned missions to the moon and, eventually, Mars. Yet more than national prestige is at stake: China is counting on its space program to pay huge economic dividends.

China is NASA’s biggest rival in space exploration with plans to land “taikonauts” on the moon by 2036 and Mars thereafter. Along the way, President Xi Jinping hopes the space missions will spawn a wave of Chinese innovation in robotics, aviation and artificial intelligence, among other leading 21st-century technologies.

PLA Navy eyes China’s deep-sea underwater glider after successful test shows it rivals US vessel

A fleet of underwater gliders developed by professor Yu Jiancheng’s team. Photo: Xinhua

 

Chinese military’s interest piqued after Haiyi-7000 makes it 5,751 metres down world’s deepest ocean trench

Chinese researchers have just carried out the first test of what they believe will be the world’s deepest-reaching underwater glider – challenging the record held by a vessel now in use by the US Navy.

The Haiyi-7000 – carried on board the maiden voyage of China’s submersible mother ship, Tansuo-1 – was deployed above the Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific, an ocean trench with the greatest known ocean depth of 11,034 metres from late June to early August.

It was able to glide down to a depth of 5,751 metres and its progress has greatly interested the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

Russia Will Not Send U.S. Astronauts to ISS After 2018

It was already bad enough the United States had self-created its dependency on an enemy. Now it’s in a position that’s hard to get out of now that NASA has been gutted. Some would argue it’s easy to become independent again, but since when has the government acted with urgency and efficiency when it’s for the nation’s own good?

 

NASA has few other options for sending people to the space station.

Russia will not conduct any more space launches to send U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station after 2018, according to a release issued by the country’s TASS news agency.

“We are working with our partners under the effective contracts, but we have no plans for concluding new ones,” Sergey Saveliev, the deputy chief of Russia’s state-run space agency Roscosmos, told TASS.

The next big thing in space is really, really small

Don’t expect these to come without dual-use risk, especially if China and Russia get their hands on these. Swarms could take out American satellites and potentially render the modern military useless.

 

The SunCube FemtoSat and the three-tiered version have a propulsion system, data collection and communications capability. The three-tiered one also has space for a payload. Image courtesy Charlie Leight/ASU Now.

 

Going into space is now within your grasp. A tiny spacecraft being developed at Arizona State University is breaking the barrier of launch cost, making the price of conducting a space mission radically cheaper.

“With a spacecraft this size, any university can do it, any lab can do it, any hobbyist can do it,” said Jekan Thanga, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration? The School of Earth and Space Exploration is an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. and head of the Space and Terrestrial Robotic Exploration (SpaceTREx) Laboratory.

New details of Chinese space weapons revealed

A forthcoming report by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission provides new details of China’s space-weapons programs, dubbed counterspace arms, that are aimed at destroying or jamming U.S. satellites and limiting American combat operations around the world.

“China is pursuing a broad and robust array of counterspace capabilities, which includes direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite systems, computer network operations, ground-based satellite jammers and directed energy weapons,” a late draft of the commission’s annual report states. “China’s nuclear arsenal also provides an inherent anti-satellite capability.”

China military planners expect to use a combination of kinetic, electronic and cyber attacks against satellites or ground support structures in a conflict.

Russia conducts surprise Soyuz 2-1A launch carrying Kobalt-M

Russia has launched its Soyuz 2-1A rocket in a surprise mission from the Plesetsk cosmodrome at 15:24 UTC. The launch, using a rocket that recently failed during the Progress M-27M mission, was clouded under secrecy due to its payload, the Kobalt-M spy satellite – rumored to be the final film-return photo reconnaissance spacecraft.

Soyuz 2-1A Launch:

The Soyuz 2-1 rocket is derived from the earlier Soyuz-U and the Soyuz 11A511 before that – and first flew in November 2004.

The rocket was intended as an eventual replacement for all of the Soyuz and Molniya variants then in service.

Chinese DF-41 missile can penetrate US air defense: German expert

Intercepting the DF-41 in the air is as challenging as trying to shoot a rifle bullet into another, Karl Josef Dahlem, chief advisor of air defense with the European guided weapons manufacturer MBDA, told Die Welt during an interview. Early detection by reconnaissance and radar facilities is a must for the US to intercept intercontinental missiles, Dahlem said.

US may lose ‘star wars’ to Russia

Cooperation with private firms will benefit the US space industry but cannot replace cooperation with Russia. Washington risks seeing its space projects hit hard if it abandons cooperation with Moscow, Bloomberg says.

NASA has been actively promoting commercial projects to develop new-generation space rockets, supply vehicles and spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to low-Earth orbits and bringing them back.

…

The US may not be able, as it hopes, to maintain technological lead forever just because NASA is closely cooperating with private companies, Bloomberg warns.

Ukraine crisis in space: US takes on the Russians, only this time it’s over the International Space Station

The dispute began in April, when a leaked Nasa memo revealed that the agency would be suspending all contact with the Russian government because of the country’s “ongoing violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Although the involvement of the US government was not explicit, the space agency’s decision was widely assumed to have involved the White House and State Department. Subsequent export restrictions – more specifically, “high technology defence articles or services” – confirmed the US’s intent to punish Russia’s struggling space industry.

However, there’s one area where the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, remains king: transport.

Russia to ban US from using Space Station over Ukraine sanctions

What was once an ill-conceived plan to save money via budget reductions had left America reliant upon the Soviets, and now the true cost is being paid.

Russia is to deny the US future use of the International Space Station beyond 2020 and will also bar its rocket engines from launching US military satellites as it hits back at American sanctions imposed over Ukraine crisis.

Russia’s deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced a series of punitive measures on Tuesday against the US in response to sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea.

Russia charging NASA $A68m per rocket seat

It’s taken only thirty years for the United States in its golden years to go from keeping the Evil Empire in check to becoming reliant upon it — as well as beginning to give them the already-domestically-produced rope from which they will hang USA with. As long as the American shopping mall regime still has plenty of Apple stores from which to purchase a new iPad and plenty of Kardashians to follow, there is no problem or real news to be concerned of.

NASA will pay $US70.7 million ($A68.50 million) to Russia for each astronaut Moscow’s space agency ferries into orbit in 2016 and 2017, the US space agency said.

NASA and Roscomos signed a $US424 million agreement to bring six US astronauts aloft for long-term mission aboard the ISS. The deal would cover all training, launch preparation, flight operation, landing and if needed rescue efforts.

The previous agreement had set the price at $US62.7 million per seat through 2015.