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posted by takyon on Saturday February 04 2023, @10:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the pop! dept.

China balloon: US shoots down airship over Atlantic

The US has shot down a giant Chinese balloon that it says has been spying on key military sites across America.

The Department of Defense confirmed its fighter jets brought down the balloon over US territorial waters.

Three airports were shut and airspace was closed off the coast of North and South Carolina as the military carried out the operation on Saturday.

Footage on US TV networks showed the balloon falling to the sea after a small explosion.

An F-22 jet fighter engaged the high-altitude balloon with one missile - an AIM-9X Sidewinder - and it went down about six nautical miles off the US coast at 14:39 EST (19:39 GMT), a defence official told reporters.

US President Joe Biden had been under pressure to shoot the balloon down since defence officials first announced they were tracking it on Thursday.

Second balloon spotted over Latin America:

On Friday, the Pentagon said a second Chinese spy balloon had been spotted - this time over Latin America with reported sightings over Costa Rica and Venezuela.

See also:

US downs Chinese balloon, a flashpoint in US-China tensions
From China to Big Sky: The Balloon That Unnerved the White House
3 Navy Warships, FBI Now Hunting for Wreckage of Chinese Spy Balloon off South Carolina
Biden's 'Sputnik moment': Is China's spy balloon political warfare?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday February 09 2023, @03:40PM (3 children)

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday February 09 2023, @03:40PM (#1290902) Homepage Journal

    The government knows if China had a satellite over us when the balloon was here, but you'll not know. It's classified. I'd be surprised if Russia and China don't both have satellites permanently over us, parked in a geosynchronous orbit. Those satellites can read the date on a dime, from orbit, through walls. They're Hubbles turned away from space and towards Earth. I suspect that the focus problem they had when they sent Hubble up was they simply sent a spy satellite pointed to the stars; it was, after all, nearsighted before they repaired it.

    I'm bemused at the media's screaming about Biden's transparency when they didn't find out about the classified documents in his house. The dumbasses, you simply are NOT supposed to be transparent about anything classified! They didn't want the Russians and Chinese knowing that we have people taking classified documents home.

    They're not allowed to tell you this, but I'm a civilian now and my 1st amendment rights say it's perfectly legal to tell you my hunches, although there is some fifty year old stuff I know about that's still classified and I' won't discuss it.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
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  • (Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday February 09 2023, @11:09PM (2 children)

    by Opportunist (5545) on Thursday February 09 2023, @11:09PM (#1290989)

    Well, no.

    Geosync orbit is FAR away. For comparison, the ISS orbits at about 350km, geosync is at about 36,000km. It's also not as simple as "pointing Hubble inwards".

    Most of all, though, a geostationary orbit, i.e. what you want for such a case, can only be achieved above the equator. Otherwise you're again dealing with the problem that your sat will only be "on target" for half the time during an orbit, which is in the case of a geosynchronous orbit also a day. It will always be on target at exactly the same time every day. The rest of the time it will be moving to or away from your target. If you tried to take clear pictures of something in, say, Montana, you'll spend twice as much time taking pictures of Baja California, and about as much time taking pictures of R'lyeh.

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday February 11 2023, @03:20PM (1 child)

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday February 11 2023, @03:20PM (#1291268) Homepage Journal

      Geosync orbit is FAR away.

      Yes, it is, and they can still read the date on a dime through a roof. I saw stuff half a century ago in the USAF that nobody still knows except government entities like military people. REALLY hard to imagine what they have now. That satellite dish in your neighbor's yard is fed from a geosynchronous satellite. Spy satellites aren't limited to visible light any more than astronomy telescopes are. They're not limited by much at all, in fact.

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday February 12 2023, @10:29AM

        by Opportunist (5545) on Sunday February 12 2023, @10:29AM (#1291390)

        They are also not magical boxes that can ignore physics. There is another reason Hubble is up there instead of being a powerful instrument down here on earth: Distortion from the atmosphere. That pesky crap that would make astronomy so much easier if it wasn't there (ok, we'd have a hard time breathing, but some sacrifices have to be made for science).

        That stuff not only keeps us from looking out with impunity, it also keeps us from doing the opposite. Which gets me to yes, there are other wavelengths than visual light, but quite a few of them are not only distorted but simply obscured by the atmosphere of our planet, making "looking down" in various wavelenghts really annoyingly difficult.

        Some of them, though, only matter either when you have the whole atmosphere "against" you, or only certain layers of it actually block your view.