Meanwhile in Russia...

[HoneyBadger]

They put three other Glonass birds in the Pacific a year or two ago. Hail GPS.

Things are not working out well for the Europeans either:
http://spacenews.com/article/launch-...s-is-a-failure

PONTE VEDRA, Florida — The Aug. 22 launch of the first two fully operational Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites, initially cheered as a success, will now be registered as a failure of the Europeanized Soyuz rocket’s Fregat upper stage, which left the satellites in a useless orbit, government and industry officials said Aug. 23.

As of midafternoon Central European Time Aug. 23 — 24 hours after launch and 20 hours after the Fregat stage inserted the satellites into orbit — launch service provider Arianespace and the European Space Agency said they were still investigating the injection anomaly and could not conclude what, if any, effect it would have on the two satellites’ functionality.

Arianespace released a statement late on Aug. 23 saying the satellites, for reasons unknown, were placed into a wrong orbit by the rocket's Fregat upper stage.

[ruthabagah]

Things are not working out well for the Europeans either:
http://spacenews.com/article/launch-...s-is-a-failure

Yep: Russian Fregat rocket..... See a pattern here?

[theGinsue]

And just to increase people's understanding of just how screwed we are these days, the Atlas 5 that we use for most launches these days uses Russian RD 180 motors.

Speaking of which....

Last Friday, SpaceX (the company founder & CEO is Elon Musk of Paypal & Tesla Motors fame) performed a test launch/flight with a Falcon9 from a test range over Texas. Shortly after TO, the F9R systems sensed something wasn't right and executed an "Auto-termination explosion" during the test flight [See video embedded below]. There was supposed to be a launch this evening of another SpaceX Falcon9 rocket but it's been delayed 24 hours due to the failed test launch last Friday. If no one gets figgitty between now & then, it'l launch tomorrow night (SpaceX is notorious for repeatedly delaying their launches & executing/attempting to execute them on holidays - see Falcon9 SES8 launch attempt last Thanksgiving).



ETA: Corrected my text.

[sniper7]

The company my FIL works for has had 1 failed orbit of one of their satellites and the last one blew up. Insured for $1 billion each luckily. Supposed to launch another soon.

they can see the expiration numbers on your license plates.

[HoneyBadger]

The company my FIL works for has...

they can see the expiration numbers on your license plates.

I seriously doubt this, mostly because of the physical properties of light gathering instrumentation. I did the math a while back and to be able to read the big numbers in your license plate, the focal length of the telescope had to be several times larger than the Hubble (BuffCyclist should be able to support me here if I'm not mistaken). Nevermind the optical abnormalities of 400+km of atmosphere, lighting angles, shadows, humidity, clouds, relative motion, etc. I'm sure your FIL is a great guy, but I would recommend taking this with a few grains of salt. The big issue for me is that if we (US Gov) had this kind of resolution, I would be using it for my job fairly regularly.

[sniper7]

I seriously doubt this, mostly because of the physical properties of light gathering instrumentation. I did the math a while back and to be able to read the big numbers in your license plate, the focal length of the telescope had to be several times larger than the Hubble (BuffCyclist should be able to support me here if I'm not mistaken). Nevermind the optical abnormalities of 400+km of atmosphere, lighting angles, shadows, humidity, clouds, relative motion, etc. I'm sure your FIL is a great guy, but I would recommend taking this with a few grains of salt. The big issue for me is that if we (US Gov) had this kind of resolution, I would be using it for my job fairly regularly.

i wouldn't call him a great guy, but he is manageable.

The hubble was launched in 1990. Think of the technology changes since then, even simple things like a cell phone, then move on to cameras, how many megapixels you can get, the quality of glass, the quality of the focus you can get now. And that is just on simple stuff we use every day.

Even in 2000, satellites could see if a vehicle had a license plate, couldn't read it, but could tell if one was there. 14 years is a lot of time and a lot of satellites have been launched since then.

[Aloha_Shooter]

i wouldn't call him a great guy, but he is manageable.

The hubble was launched in 1990. Think of the technology changes since then, even simple things like a cell phone, then move on to cameras, how many megapixels you can get, the quality of glass, the quality of the focus you can get now. And that is just on simple stuff we use every day.

Even in 2000, satellites could see if a vehicle had a license plate, couldn't read it, but could tell if one was there. 14 years is a lot of time and a lot of satellites have been launched since then.

Sensors change but optics doesn't. There's a limit to what kind of resolvable image you can get based on the primary aperture of the telescope. Yes, you can compensate for atmospheric distortion using deformable mirrors but that usually requires something like a laser guidestar. You can do subpixel processing but that usually requires extended image integration which is pretty tricky given the satellite motion. Bottom line, I might buy the satellite could see the expiration sticker on your plate but I don't buy it can produce a resolvable image allowing you to read the sticker.

[HoneyBadger]

Sensors change but optics doesn't. There's a limit to what kind of resolvable image you can get based on the primary aperture of the telescope. Yes, you can compensate for atmospheric distortion using deformable mirrors but that usually requires something like a laser guidestar. You can do subpixel processing but that usually requires extended image integration which is pretty tricky given the satellite motion. Bottom line, I might buy the satellite could see the expiration sticker on your plate but I don't buy it can produce a resolvable image allowing you to read the sticker.

Agreed. As I said above, optical physics is the big limiter here. There are some nifty tricks, but mm resolution is something I don't think you can get from LEO with current tech.

[sniper7]

Sensors change but optics doesn't. There's a limit to what kind of resolvable image you can get based on the primary aperture of the telescope. Yes, you can compensate for atmospheric distortion using deformable mirrors but that usually requires something like a laser guidestar. You can do subpixel processing but that usually requires extended image integration which is pretty tricky given the satellite motion. Bottom line, I might buy the satellite could see the expiration sticker on your plate but I don't buy it can produce a resolvable image allowing you to read the sticker.

So why can you believe it can see the sticker but not be able to produce an image of the sticker with clarity. And what's to stop optics from improving...are we at the ultimate limit? I honestly don't know a lot of details or facts/figures of satellites or optics/imagery, but I don't doubt we have the technology to see clear images of small objects from space. It's not like it's really that inconceivable of a notion.

[zteknik]