Photograph of Spy Satellite IGS-1B Captured in Its Final Orbits
IGS-1A
and 1B satellites.
IGS-1B
is a Japanese Information Gathering Satellite that was launched on March 28,
2003 together with its companion IGS-1A on board a H2A rocket. Both satellites
were delivered into a 486 x 491 km orbit with an inclination of 97 degrees. The
satellites orbited within 37 minutes of each other.
In
2007 it was announced by officials that IGS-1B was malfunctioning due to a loss
of power. Since that time the satellite's orbit was observed to degrade.
The
expected announcement of its upcoming uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry finally
happened on Thursday, July 26, 2012 at 9:52 GMT. Re-entry was located over the
Pacific Ocean, about 1,300 kilometers north-east of New Zealand. It is
plausible that a considerable amount of fuel was still onboard during re-entry
of IGS-1B.
It's
companion IGS-1A is still in orbit. In the last years, I regularly pointed my
camera to IGS-1A and IGS-1B without any spectacular results; the images
revealed not much detail. These satellites appeared to be reasonably difficult
objects to capture in their original orbits.
That
changed July 25, when I was able to capture IGS-1B just 13 hours before its
re-entry in an almost overhead pass in favourable atmospheric conditions. The
altitude of the satellite at that time had already dropped below 200 km.He
upper set of images show original unprocessed color frames from my video-camera
attached to a 10 inch aperture reflecting telescope. It was one of the objects
with the highest angular speed I have captured so far using my fully-manual
tracking method.
We
see clearly the typical golden color of the foil wrapped around the satellite.
The stronger processing used in the grayscale images on the bottom show
interesting detail. Beside the solar panels - which from this angle are seen
only slightly illuminated by sunlight - we see some nice detail on the
satellite-body appearing as some knots and ridges that are confirmed by the
other images of this frame-set.
Searching
the web for any pre-launch images of this satellite to compare with, I found
out that there actually doesn't exist published factory-images of IGS-1B or a
comparable satellite of this type, only some sketches illustrating the
approximate configuration of the satellites (see illustration on top, left).
As
the website Spaceflight 101 puts it: "Ground-Based images of classified
spacecraft are extremely rare as most of these vehicles are in classified
orbits," making the efforts put into obtaining telescopic photography of
this type of satellites all the more worthwhile.
For further information
visit: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Photograph_of_Spy_Satellite_IGS_1B_Captured_in_Its_Final_Orbits_999.html
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