Financial Times: Satellite wars
A new arms race in our skies threatens the satellites that control everything from security to communications
An unlikely memorial runs across the middle of the marketplace in Kettering — an otherwise unremarkable English market town. This slab of granite, set into the paving as part of a timeline of local history, reads “Russian Satellites: Grammar School Beats Nasa”. Etched into the stone is the distinctive outline of a sputnik orbiter.
Kettering Grammar School — like the space race — is long gone. But for a period it was on the front line of the extraterrestrial battle between Washington and Moscow. The Kettering Group — the school’s enthusiastic science masters and their eager pupils — became the world’s foremost amateur satellite sleuths, tracking secret Soviet launches and uncovering the location of a previously secret Russian cosmodrome from the workaday shire town.
WNU Editor: The above FT post is a comprehensive look at the weaponization of space from the beginning of the space age to the present day. China and the U.S. are the two principle players, and in a sign of the changing times, both countries have now established a "hot-line" between both capitals .... US and China set up ‘space hotline’ (Financial Times)
A couple years ago China and the US put on a demonstration of how to shoot down a satellite. Following that the US military began launching some extended secret missions into space. My guess is that they are establishing some back up communications capabilities to use in the event a satellite war breaks out.
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