(meteorobs) Followup on Air Force Bolide Observations

[meteoreye at comcast.net]

http://www.space.com/news/090703-military-fireballs-data.html 




By Leonard David 
SPACE.com's Space Insider Columnist 
posted: 03 July 2009 
03:10 pm ET 


A few weeks ago I wrote about scientists who were unhappy that a purported clamp down was afoot on their use of data snagged by U.S. military spacecraft – hush hush satellites that from time to time catch natural cosmic fireballs blazing through Earth's atmosphere. 

Digging in on this story is not easy. Military higher-ups and the agencies involved are guarded about how potent their satellite sensors are as they stare at Earth for nuclear detonations, missile launches and the like. 

In a new exclusive interview with SPACE.com, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Robert Rego, who is in charge of the policy guidance behind the data release, said the Air Force Space Command is "circling the wagons" to close some loopholes in the dissemination of potentially sensitive information. 

U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said he's monitoring the situation and expects a solution that favors the needs of scientists. 

Super-sensitive 

For decades, these spacecraft have picked up incoming invaders in our air space. And over time, the scientific community has been given selected, declassified blasts of bolide (meteor) data from those satellites. It's all valuable information for space rock hounds who would go search for meteorites, and it's also useful to astronomers who aim to gauge the Near Earth Object (NEO) impact hazard posed by larger and less frequent asteroids. 

But then the word from scientists was that the space rock data sharing was being short-circuited by the U.S. military. The initial story about that controversial decision has touched off talk within civilian and military circles and in Congress. 

The angst of researchers was apparently sparked by a March 16 memo from Brigadier General Rego, the mobilization assistant to the Director of Air, Space and Nuclear Operations at the headquarters of the Air Force Space Command, Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. 

That communique calls for a relook at "the protection measures" for bolide reporting, due to the possible leaks of information regarding super-sensitive traits of the U.S. Nuclear Detonation Detection System. 

What the system does 

The system is in place to detect, locate, and report nuclear detonations in the Earth's atmosphere and near space, doing so in near real-time. It makes use of space-based sensors and ground-based mission processing systems. The sensor payloads are carried onboard the military's Global Positioning System navigation satellites, as well as Defense Support Program spacecraft. 

The system also spots incoming fireballs, even gauging the energy released as an extraterrestrial piece of flotsam explodes in our atmosphere. That information can yield scientific insight, such as the object's mass as its brightness fades as it falls. A sensor-derived light curve can offer important information about how the object decelerated when it struck the atmosphere, and thereby yield implications about its strength too. 

A few weeks ago I wrote about scientists who were unhappy that a purported clamp down was afoot on their use of data snagged by U.S. military spacecraft – hush hush satellites that from time to time catch natural cosmic fireballs blazing through Earth's atmosphere. 

Digging in on this story is not easy. Military higher-ups and the agencies involved are guarded about how potent their satellite sensors are as they stare at Earth for nuclear detonations, missile launches and the like. 

In a new exclusive interview with SPACE.com, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Robert Rego, who is in charge of the policy guidance behind the data release, said the Air Force Space Command is "circling the wagons" to close some loopholes in the dissemination of potentially sensitive information. 

U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said he's monitoring the situation and expects a solution that favors the needs of scientists. 

Super-sensitive 

For decades, these spacecraft have picked up incoming invaders in our air space. And over time, the scientific community has been given selected, declassified blasts of bolide (meteor) data from those satellites. It's all valuable information for space rock hounds who would go search for meteorites, and it's also useful to astronomers who aim to gauge the Near Earth Object (NEO) impact hazard posed by larger and less frequent asteroids. 

But then the word from scientists was that the space rock data sharing was being short-circuited by the U.S. military. The initial story about that controversial decision has touched off talk within civilian and military circles and in Congress. 

The angst of researchers was apparently sparked by a March 16 memo from Brigadier General Rego, the mobilization assistant to the Director of Air, Space and Nuclear Operations at the headquarters of the Air Force Space Command, Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. 

That communique calls for a relook at "the protection measures" for bolide reporting, due to the possible leaks of information regarding super-sensitive traits of the U.S. Nuclear Detonation Detection System. 

What the system does 

The system is in place to detect, locate, and report nuclear detonations in the Earth's atmosphere and near space, doing so in near real-time. It makes use of space-based sensors and ground-based mission processing systems. The sensor payloads are carried onboard the military's Global Positioning System navigation satellites, as well as Defense Support Program spacecraft. 

The system also spots incoming fireballs, even gauging the energy released as an extraterrestrial piece of flotsam explodes in our atmosphere. That information can yield scientific insight, such as the object's mass as its brightness fades as it falls. A sensor-derived light curve can offer important information about how the object decelerated when it struck the atmosphere, and thereby yield implications about its strength too.