# The Orbital Index

Issue No. 93 | Dec 2, 2020

🚀 🌍 🛰

 ¶Space warfare. Despite all of our hopes to the contrary, war will probably be fought in space one day. However, that war will (hopefully!) be slow and boring, with countries prioritizing directed energy and electronic attacks on satellites over kinetic ones so as to avoid creating debris that would deny space access as much to themselves as others. Russia, the US, China, & India all have direct ascent anti-satellite weapons (with the latter three countries having spread space debris during ill-conceived weapons tests), and Israel may as well. At least the US and Russia also have anti-satellite satellites that maneuver around and muck with other satellites in undefined ways. These countries also likely have ground and satellite-based jammers and lasers (both dazzling and destructive). Satellites are very hard to defend because they have predictable orbits and very limited maneuvering budgets, so instead of having a few exquisite satellites as the US military does now, the US DOD is following (and employing) the NewSpace industry toward a proliferation of small, disposable satellites. Related: A PDF entitled “The physics of space war: how orbital dynamics constrain space-to-space engagements” from Aerospace Corp. talks about how the limited ∆v budgets of space vehicles limits warfare and makes planning and timing essential to an attack. (The PDF, oddly, has the following invisible text on the first page: “THIS MATERIAL IS BEING PROVIDED PRE-RELEASE SOLELY FOR THE USE OF GEN. JAMES DICKINSON, AND IS NOT APPROVED FOR RELEASE.”)
 News in brief. Another cable failed and the Arecibo Observatory collapsed, ending an era 😢; Chang’e 5 successfully entered lunar orbit, circularized its orbit, and the lander successfully landed on the Moon!—sampling should happen today; JAXA launched LUCAS, a geostationary satellite for relaying data from LEO satellites via laser link; ExoMars has (finally) successfully completed parachute tests ahead of its 2022 launch; Starship SN8 may attempt its maiden 15 km flight as soon as today, and whatever the outcome, it should be spectacular 💥; and, Relativity Space raised $500 million for their upcoming 3D printed rockets (one of the largest space funding rounds ever), valuing the company at$2.3B—they’ve now raised more than both RocketLab and SpaceX did to launch their first vehicle.