A Chinese satellite has used a manoeuvre to avoid being followed by a spying US satellite, hinting at its capability in potential space warfare.
But some defence analysts said the scenario was not new and the incident should not be seen as escalating the rivalry between China and the United States in space.
“It is not difficult to monitor satellites,” said Chinese military commentator Song Zhongping. “The US, Russia and China are all able to monitor each other’s satellites in orbit. But the US will certainly plan its space infrastructure through monitoring the satellites of China and Russia.”
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Such monitoring and manoeuvring was not necessarily for a military purpose, he said.
In July, the Shijian 20, China’s heaviest and most advanced communication satellite, was approached in parallel by a US space surveillance satellite, USA 271. The Chinese satellite “rapidly” moved away, US military website Breaking Defence reported on Friday.
The Chinese detected the shadowing of the American satellite, the report said, citing information from space tracking company Commercial Space Operations Centre (ComSpOC).
“They start doing calibration manoeuvres and they’re very, very small manoeuvres, so it’s hard,” said Jim Cooper, the lead for space situational awareness at ComSpOC. “It’s about having the right system that can process and detect those small manoeuvres when you’re that close.”
The ComSpOC data also showed that in 2018, when another Chinese satellite, Tongxin Jishu Shiyan 3, took its position in geosynchronous orbit, the upper stage of the rocket that delivered the satellite had been loaded with extra fuel to enable it to stay parallel to it, to act as a decoy.
Cooper believed that was a tactic to fool an enemy’s network of space situational awareness, and to gain China several days of freedom during which it could “be off doing things that are potentially threatening” while the other country had lost track of where the Chinese satellite was.
Monitoring and manoeuvring the orbiting satellites is a necessity to avoid collisions, but the US has long been concerned about Chinese satellites’ capabilities in potential space warfare. READ MORE...
