14 DAY TRIAL // A troubled American satellite belonging to the U.S. Air Force's Defense Support Program (DSP) program is slowly but firmly drifting away from its designated place, high up in the orbit. The unwanted movement of the DSP-23 satellite is prone to endanger the integrity of other expensive and important satellites in the agglomerated region of space. The problem was signaled by a Russian space analyst, Vladimir Agapov.
Agapov, a senior scientist for the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics at the Academy of Sciences in Russia, is a collaborator of the International Space Observation Network (ISON), which is an international group of optical facilities that monitor the high altitude Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) ring and track the artificial objects and debris present there. Some of you may know about this space debris from a recent article.
The ISON network is comprised of 18 scientific institutions from different countries, 18 observatories and dedicated facilities, 25 observation devices, with over 50 researchers pledging their efforts to the cause. So far, they have been able to detect 152 "unknown" objects with no data associated to their provenience or purpose, as is regularly provided by the U.S. Air Force Space Surveillance Network through its Space-Track database.
"We have continuously tracked an object we have identified as DSP F23 since January 10, 2008," shared Agapov, quoted by Space. "Identification is made on the base of initial orbital information obtained by amateur astronomers using their own measurements." The subsequent observations indicated that the object had passively moved along GEO after having ceased its three maneuvers about two months ago. When asked about the possibility of hitting other satellites in the vicinity, he answered that "it exists". Further measurements are required in order to determine its status more precisely.