GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Russia loses new military satellite

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: GlobalSecurity.org

02February2011 4:29pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE:  MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti) - Russia has most likely lost a new dual-purpose geodesic satellite after it failed to reach a designated circular orbit 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) above Earth.

The GEO-IK-2 satellite, designed to create a detailed three-dimensional map of the Earth and help the Russian military to locate the precise positions of various targets, was launched Tuesday on board a Rockot carrier rocket from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia.

The spacecraft failed to communicate with Russia's Ground Control at a designated time but was reportedly "discovered" by U.S. space monitoring services, moving along an elliptical orbit whose lowest point brought it to within 330 kilometers (205 miles) of Earth. (read full report)

 

 

 

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's advertisers or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Flying into orbit in small package

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: U.S. ARMY

31January2011 4:48pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE:  REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. -- For 35 days, the comings and goings of employees in the Von Braun Complex parking lot here were the focus of a group of young engineers involved in an experiment with the first Army-built satellite launched in more than 50 years.

Those engineers weren't spying on employees. Nor were they looking for fodder for gossip or to start rumors. They were simply using the physical movements through the parking lot to test the capabilities of a 10-inch long, 10-pound satellite in orbit 200 miles above ground.

The Space and Missile Defense Command-Operational Nanosatellite Effect, known as SMDC-ONE, was launched Dec. 8, as a secondary payload on a Falcon 9 two-stage booster flown commercially by Space Exploration Technologies.  (read full report)