The general assured that when it comes to outer space technology, 'We are still the best in the world, clearly in terms of capability.' He also revealed that a 2019 weapons test by a Russian satellite came so close to a US satellite that the military feared an imminent attack. Some of the regular attacks facing the US include the use of lasers, radio frequency jamming and other cyberattacks, Thompson said. He warned, 'We're really at a point now where there's a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.'
Thompson is the US Space Force's first vice chief of space operations, having previously served more than three decades in the Air Force. And it's really an evolution of activity that's been happening for a long time,' General David Thompson told the Washington Post in a piece published on Tuesday.
'The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. In October, China's Foreign Ministry brushed-off a report that China had tested a hypersonic missile two months earlier, saying it had merely tested whether a new spacecraft could be reused.Īmerican satellites far outside the Earth's orbit are facing a near-constant barrage of threats from Russian and Chinese technology, and it's only getting worse, a top Space Force officer is warning.Īn arms race in space between the US, Russia and China has been steadily heating up in recent years even as officials in Washington warn that such a build-up is dangerous. The rover is the first to be placed on the little-explored far side of the moon, while China's Chang'e 5 probe returned lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s last December.Īnother Chinese rover, meanwhile, is searching for evidence of life on Mars. They found areas of the plane that needed strengthening because of the spikes in heat and pressure experienced at high speed.Ĭhina's space program is barred from the International Space Station, mainly due to US concerns over its intimate military connections.Ĭhina has also pushed ahead with un-crewed missions, and its lunar exploration program generated media buzz this week when its Yutu 2 rover sent back pictures of what was described by some as a 'mystery hut, but was most likely only a rock of some sort. In a paper published in the Journal of Propulsion Technology, the team said that while the prototype may not reach production, 'understanding its work mechanism can provide important guidance to hypersonic plane and engine development.'Įngineers used a a new aerodynamic model, which was proven effective in China’s latest space missions, to see how well the plane would perform at high altitudes. Ming Han Tang, a former engineer in the Nasa hypersonic programme, designed the Two-Stage Vehicle (TSV) X-plane technology that uses two separate engines with no moving parts on each side of the plane. They based the plane's design on the Boeing Manta X-47C, which was part of a project abandoned by Nasa in 2000 for being too costly. Its prototype was revealed in a study by Chinese space scientists involved in the country's Mars and moon missions. This is possible because ICBMs and their warheads follow a predictable trajectory that rises high above the horizon - making them relatively easy to spot and allowing defense crews to calculate where they are aimed so they can be shot out of the sky.įOBS is designed to negate these defenses by firing warheads along a much-flatter trajectory that is assisted by Earth's gravity. Those systems work by detecting launches of ICBMs - very long-range missiles that can be tipped with nuclear warheads - tracking them into space and then firing at the warheads as they come down in the hope of blowing them up before they hit their targets. The idea behind China's 'new' weapon actually came from the Soviets, who developed it during the Cold War.Ĭalled a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, or FOBS, it was designed to evade powerful US radar arrays and missile defence systems. If confirmed - Beijing denies it, saying it actually tested a civilian spacecraft - then it marks a major jump in the country's nuclear programme, though the concept itself is nothing new. Intelligence sources say Beijing has tested two nuclear-capable hypersonic vehicles that flew around the planet in low-Earth orbit before coming back down.
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