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Probes Point to Northrop Grumman Errors in January SpaceX Spy-Satellite Failure
- natch 9y agoThere are at least two large problems relating to this inside Northrop Grumman as I see it. One, the apparent technical mistakes that led to the failure, assuming these separate probes are correct. Two, the apparent ethical failure and cowardice of top Northrop Grumman management, which has as far as I can tell has sat by silently letting SpaceX be blamed.
- jimrandomh 9y agoI don't think it's fair to call it an ethical failure. The mission was classified; presumably they asked their lawyers what they could say, and their lawyers told them not to say anything.
- samstave 9y agoI agree with this. I really wonder what Zuma was capable of?
- londons_explore 9y agoIt was designed to have a very large unfoldable directional antenna to be able to transmit and receive signals in the 500Mhz - 5Ghz range, despite atmospheric attenuation. I would guess the goal was to be able to passively listen to wifi and LTE signals in hostile countries without hardware on the ground. The antenna was sensitive to shocks when folded, hence the modification of the payload adapter to avoid them.
- jstanley 9y agoWhat?? You mean I can't pick up my wifi from the end of the garden, but there's a chance the US government is listening in from space? Is that seriously possible?
- sitharus 9y agoWhile I can’t comment on if it would be possible from orbit, there are two components to receiving a radio signal - transmitter strength and antenna gain. These work together to provide a signal clear enough to be amplified in to something usable. In a modern portable device the antenna is quite small and often close to other electronics, so the gain is not great. You can buy dedicated hardware that can receive over much greater distances. Additionally device antennas are omnidirectional, so they pick up noise from every direction but the signal from only one. A directional antenna has much greater gain as it excludes most of the noise.
- dullgiulio 9y agoBut isn't both WiFi and LTE encrypted?
- sitharus 9y agoYes, but you can obtain other info without the keys, such as SSID locations. Personally I’m doubtful, unless the satellite was in geostationary orbit then it wouldn’t have that long over each location. I guess if it was in a Molniya-type orbit, but that would take it quite high. Guess we’ll never know.
- patcheudor 9y agoIt depends. Both WiFi and LTE can be attacked via evil-twin attacks where a base station pretends to be the legitimate one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_twin_(wireless_networks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_twin_(wireless_networks) and: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4392401-4G-LTE-attacks-paper.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4392401-4G-LTE-attac...
- paranoidrobot 9y agoGiven how frequently we discover major flaws in the implementation of TLS, despite how well that is scrutinised. It's not unreasonable to believe there would similarly be major flaws in the implementation of 3G/LTE security that could be exploited.
- jimrandomh 9y agoThat is awfully specific for a pseudonymous uncited post about a spy satellite. I don't think people should believe you.
- taneq 9y agoAgreed. In future when posting detailed technical information about classified military operations, please do so from a verified account and provide sources and reference material. ;)
- techdragon 9y agoI’d say its specific because its a sensible extrapolation based on existing declassified information combined with the small amount of leaked information that has trickled out over the years. While reading about the possible conspiracy that the failure did not happen and it was to cover the launch of a stealth satellite, this was basically the satellite payload I pictured. Based on its role as a high orbit SIGINT satellite it would have a huge antenna, huge antennas are fragile buggers to launch, thus the fancy custom payload adapter.
- greglindahl 9y agoSource?
- walls 9y agoThen they went into a briefing and told reporters they needed to ask SpaceX what happened. That's not cool.
- emeraldd 9y agoIt's entirely possible they didn't officially have the telemetry to answer any questions until speaking with SpaceX. They also have a responsibility to their own investors and business to get the answers right the first time.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoThen they shouldn't have blamed SpaceX.
- greglindahl 9y agoIt's unknown who blamed SpaceX; it could have been the Senator from Alabama's staff.
- natch 9y agoI think the HN crowd already knows the mission was classified. But as we saw certain aspects of the launch were allowed to be mentioned. For example, SpaceX made a statement afterward about what they knew. This aspect was not classified. Lawyers don't just tell you what you can and cannot say. They also sometimes tell you what you should and should not say for PR purposes or to manipulate a situation. There's plenty of room here to call this an ethical failure.
- caconym_ 9y agoIt's certainly possible, but I'm not sure I'd "presume" it. NG certainly had a motivation to cover up a failure they were responsible for, whether or not they were legally required to stay quiet.
- jws 9y agoI'd be interested to know who the unnamed sources that fed the false narrative to Bloomberg and the WSJ about it being a SpaceX problem were. (I think those were the originating news organizations, but I may be remembering that wrong.) This was a month before the Falcon Heavy launch which had a reasonable chance of a spectacular failure. Priming the public to think of SpaceX as a satellite destroyer and then a high profile failure would have been fantastic for United Launch Alliance. I think it was pretty clear that SpaceX's customers didn't believe it as a SpaceX problem. Subsequent launches were not delayed pending investigation as they were for legitimate failures. Or maybe it was just sloppy reporting from some guy shooting off his mouth.
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoThe Wall Street Journal’s rocket reporter, Andy Pasztor [1], has had an anti-commercial space bias since as far back as I can remember. His sources appear to be Boeing and Lockheed Martin company men. His reporting echoes their world views, inaccuracies and all. [1] https://www.wsj.com/news/author/1472 https://www.wsj.com/news/author/1472
- TheBill 9y agoPlus take the fact that Lockheed/Boeing/ULA are public and SpaceX is not. Take the fall long and public enough that by the time the market would adjust their pricing it's largely been forgotten.
- neuronexmachina 9y agoYep, even before I saw your comment I guessed that the initial SpaceX hit-piece was written by Andy Pasztor.
- Wile_E_Quixote 9y agoLooking through the recent Wall Street Journal A. Pasztor headlines that you've linked to, it seems Northrop Grumman has also been having production issues with the James Webb Space Telescope satellite. Upon further search, I haven't yet seen any articles claiming that the issues are technical mistakes, only that they were "avoidable". Not a great PR month for NG.
- dfsegoat 9y agoThis is assuming it actually failed. https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgrego/lost-in-space-the-zuma-satellite https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgrego/lost-in-space-the-zuma-s...
- thomaskcr 9y agoThe only reason this is even a thing is because Musk's fans are involved. Every other launch on all of wikipedia is a "Success", "Partial Failure" or "Failure" - regardless of who is at fault. Only SpaceX would get a special "Launch success", because it's always everyone's fault except ~~Tesla~~ SpaceX. Look at Arianespace's last "Partial launch failure" -- upper stage was developed by a completely different company but it was still a launch failure. I think Northrop just didn't want to get involved in the silliness.
- greglindahl 9y agoYeah, about that Atlas V failure that's recorded as a success? I guess Tesla/SpaceX is at fault for that, too. Those 2 Soyuz launches that I edited on Wikipedia from success to failures, that must be Tesla/SpaceX's fault, too.
- debt 9y ago$3.5 billion dollar satellite? That must've been one hell of a piece of equipment. I really can't even imagine would was on that thing that would cost that much to develop.
- whoisjuan 9y agoFrom my understanding developing Military Satellites is far more expensive than developing commercial satellites. The reason is actually the amount of secrecy and protocol behind the development of classified technologies. Building a satellite is already an ultra-complex project that requires designing and sourcing specialized parts that need to comply with some very detailed specs. I'm speculating but I'd have to imagine that a project so heavily classified, would result in a larger cost (reduced availability of contractors, more time required to design specialized parts, less availability of researchers and manufacturing workforce that meet the security criteria, etc.) Just a reference, Envisat which was was an earth observation satellite developed by the EU, had a cost of around of $3 billion USD.
- samstave 9y agoHi.
- solarkraft 9y agoInteresting - that statement kind of puts you both in danger.
- bhouston 9y agoIt doesn't matter how he answers them, if he answered them in a way you could interpret.
- matt_the_bass 9y agoOr he was trolling you.
- samstave 9y ago
- samstave 9y agoWhat would the condition of the satellite be if it re-entered the atmosphere? Total burn up? Or is there some remnants of a $3.5 billion dollar object that are worth recovery - at least to ensure none of it got picked up by another state?
- pbreit 9y agoI presume building a second would cost far less.
- wereHamster 9y agoDon't companies build at least two versions anyway? There are three almost exact replicas of the Curiosity mars rover if I recall correctly. Building two copies instead of just one adds very little cost (relative to the overall cost of the whole project).
- pfranz 9y agoI toured JPL years ago and it sounded like the duplicate rovers were for testing maneuvers and software updates after launch. More for testing/debugging than a failsafe.
- msl 9y agoOne JPL-related source [1] indicates that the second copy can generally be obtained for 15% of the price of the first one. The primary source is "Interview with Gentry Lee, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, June 1, 1984." I doubt things have changed very much since. [1] https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-3.html https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-3.html
- ansible 9y agoThey wouldn't want anyone to be able to recover anything from a re-entered satellite, and would presumably design it so that nothing would survive reentry. At some point, at the end of its service life, they would likely have wanted to de-orbit it anyway.
- 9y ago
- djsumdog 9y agoThis is a classified satellite. There is also the very real possibility that it successfully launched, and both SpaceX and NG were paid to report that the satellite didn't make it to orbit.
- nradov 9y agoThat's not possible. Anyone with a decent radar or telescope can track the satellite. There's nowhere to hide in orbit. We don't know what was in the satellite but we do know it isn't there any more.
- mchristen 9y agoUnless that was the mission.... to try and launch an un-trackable satellite.
- nradov 9y agoThere's no possible way to build an un-trackable satellite that's large enough to make useful Earth observations. The basic limits of physics still apply. There's a difference between rocket science and magic.
- nekopa 9y agoHonest question: If we can make stealth planes, why not stealth sats?
- jakeogh 9y agoYou can try via low albedo in any required wavelength, but satellites still occult stars. Reorientation for optimal cross section is the obvious way, no idea how much that buys.
- craftyguy 9y ago> but satellites still occult stars True, but it would be very difficult to 1) observe this unless you were looking for it directly and 2) determine the object's orbit. Since stars are point light sources, you can't even tell how fast it is moving since the size of the object could mislead your attempt to deduce this by timing the event.
- exabrial 9y agoNon paywall version anywhere?
- douglascalhoun 9y agotry opening the article and then paste this into your browser's URL bar: javascript:window.location.href='https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
- gumby 9y agoThis is especially sad as Grumman made the LM ("LEM" -- Apollo lunar lander) Actually, looking at their publicity page, various companies and divisions that made parts of the Apollo program got rolled up into the current conglomerate. Edit: forgot to include the publicity/brag page: http://www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/OurHeritage/Pages/Inspace.aspx http://www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/OurHeritage/Pages/Ins...