Cosmos-2393 early-warning satellite ended its operations, bringing the number of active satellites in the space segment of the Russian early warning system down to two.
Cosmos-2393 (NORAD catalog number 27613) was launched on December 24, 2002 into a highly-elliptical orbit. It was a satellite of the 73D6 type, which are part of the US-KS early-warning system. Cosmos-2393 did not perform its regular orbit-correcting maneuver that was expected to take place in the first days of February 2007 (the last maneuver took place in November 2006). The life span of the satellite, about 50 month, is above the 40 months average for spacecraft of that type, indicating that it was a normal termination of the satellite mission.
After the Cosmos-2393 departure, the space-based segment of the Russian early-warning system is left with just two satellites - Cosmos-2422 (29260) on the highly-elliptical orbit and Cosmos-2379 (26892) on the geostationary orbit. In 2007, the Space Forces are planning to launch a new US-KS satellite into the highly-elliptical orbit. The date of the launch has not been announced yet.
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Comments
Hi Pavel with just two satellites in orbit is that enough to cover US Silo sites , I think the one in GEO orbit (cosmos-2379) and one in Elliptical Orbit (Cosmos 2422)does look at the same silos and are there for redundancy , do they provide 24x7 coverage ?
As a thumb rule what is the bare minimum EW satellite that Russia would require to cover the silos 24x7 and if it wants to expand it to world wide coverage ( Land & Sea ) what would be the bare minumum required , can we have some figures for that.
About the new US-KS satellite technically how is it better than the previous generation EW satellites.
Thanks
Austin
Pavel:
I share Austin's curiosity. Any thoughts on this?
Frank Shuler
USA
The current two satellites seem to be able to provide 24-hour coverage. The probability of detection may be fairly low, but it's certainly not zero.