0n an upper oor of a nondescript high-rise in loronto,
| sat behind led Volczans desk, peering over his shoul- der at an Excel spreadsheet on his large LC0 monitor. A scatter chart plotted the distribution of ash timings made by a satellite that he had spent years observing. Volczan, one of the worlds leading amateur observ- erswhose particular specialty involves tracking secret spacecraftstrongly suspected that this particular object wasnt actually much of a satellite. |nstead, he believed, it was a Vylar balloon deployed by the Ameri- can military, a decoy to draw attention away from a highly classied stealth satellite code-named MISTY. le long ash timings indicated that the object was slowly rotating as it hurtled through space, nearly _,ooo kilometers [just over f,8oo miles) above Earth. |d travelled to loronto to watch the night sky with Volczan, and hed been a generous host. we watched the suspected decoy slowly amble across the sky, and we observed brighter and faster satellites designed for reconnaissance missions. Volczan showed me a cast- away rocket body hurtling through the heavens and the faint icker of an unknown object in a transfer orbit, he showed me how to generate precise observational data using little more than a stopwatch. 8ut something else was also on my mind that evening. weeks earlier, in one of our sporadic phone calls, |d asked Volczan if he had a good algorithm for determin- ing satellite decay rates. when a satellite goes into orbit, | wanted to know, how long does it stay there! 0ne thing |d begun to understand about satellites, orbits, and celestial mechanics is that, in the words of theorist Jim 0berg, space is quite literally unearthly. |n his some- what obscure but, in my opinion, important book, Space Power Teory, 0berg emphasizes that if you want to understand space, you need to understand that things in space play by dierent rules than things on earth. understanding space, 0berg explains, means under- standing that much ordinary common sense doesnt apply. 0ne has to be cautious about making analogies with everyday life . . . space is a physical frontier, its also a mental one. f
|rom my conversations with Volczan, |d come to understand something about what we might call the geography of spaceor orbitology, as 0berg terms it. 0rbitology describes the topology of orbital space: the routes, passages, plateaus, parking slots, choke points, and gravitational hills and valleys pro- duced through the interactions of celestial bodies. z |n a sense, orbitology is the geography of rockets, satel- lites, and spacecraft. |n my conversations with satel- lite observers like Volczan, | had begun to understand the unearthly nature of spaces topology. 8ut |d come to suspect something else. Not only did geography work dierently in space, but time itself was unearthly as well. And thats why |d asked Volczan about how long things stay in orbit. led Volczan is more than capable of elaborating on the ner nuances of celestial mechanics, but he didnt 3 exactly answer my question. |nstead of providing me with a cryptic algorithm that | was probably ill-equipped to understand anyway, Volczan suggested that | look into something called the RAE Table of Earth Satellites. Published by the u.K.s Royal Aerospace Establishment and 0efence Research Agency from f_/ until fz, the RAE Table is an extensive catalog of man-made objects in Earth orbit. Like many other space catalogs, such as those published by the American Air |orce and European Space Agency, the RAE Table records the names, alti- tudes, and orbital characteristics of thousands of satel- lites. 8ut whats unique to the RAE Table is a number in its third column: how long a particular object is expected to stay in orbit. 8y the time | got my hands on it, the RAE Table had been out of date for years, but that didnt matter. Vol- czan suggested that | simply look up the altitude of a satellite in one of the more contemporary catalogs and compare that orbit to something similar in the RAE Table. lat comparison would give me a rough idea of how long any particular satellite would stay up in space. |or someone with mild obsessive-compulsive ten- dencies, perusing the spreadsheet-like RAE Table is absolutely fascinating. And the lifetime and descent date columns make it very clear that, indeed, time in space is deeply unearthly. le tables tell us, for example, that the discarded rocket body from a late Soviet-era satellite named Cosmos [an 0ko-class missile detection platform launched in ff) was briey in an orbit of f8 x f km [that is, an orbit whose low point, or perigree, is f8 km and whose high point, or apogee, is f km above Earth). At this low altitude, it took only two days for the higher reaches of earths atmosphere to pull the spent rocket body back to the ground. |n con- trast, we learn that Momo [V0S-f), a Japanese marine observation satellite launched in f8/ to a fo kmorbit, is predicted to linger in space until the year zo8/. Small dierences in altitude translate into hundreds of years in orbit. Cosmos , a navigation satellite similar to the American CPS system, was also launched in f8/ into a slightly higher orbit of _ x fof km. Although its only a few kilometers higher than Momo , Cosmos will remain in orbit until the year z_8/less than a hundred kilometers in altitude translates into ve hundred years more time in orbit. |f we go up another few hundred kilometers, into the fAo x fA/ km orbit of Cosmos [a Soviet Strela military communication satellite launched in f/), then the orbital time increases to seven thousand years. |or a reality check, that number marks the amount of time between the rise of agriculture in the Nile valley and the present day. le kick-motor from an American lor 0elta launch in f8A [Star-E PKM, in a __8 x AAz km orbit) will come down in about a hundred thousand years. lats three times longer than Aurignacian cave paintings, the oldest examples of gurative art on our planet. 0ne hundred thousand years ago, Neanderthals roamed Europe, and the earliest recognizably modern humans were beginning to spread. And the only reason that kick-motor will fall back to earth so quickly is because its perigee is reasonably deep in the ionosphere, and the accumulated atmosphere drag slowly adds up. And then theres the geosynchronous orbit, or CS0. lis orbit was rst theorized by the Russian aerospace visionary Konstantin lsiolkovsky in the late nineteenth century, and the Slovenian engineer Rerman Potonik rst calculated its distance in fz8. |ts a special orbit, because a geosynchronous satellite orbits the earth at the same rate at which the earth rotates. lus a CS0 satellite eectively stays over one area on the earths surface, and for that reason, CS0 is the standard orbit for hundreds of telecommunications satellites broadcast- ing television, relaying phone calls, facilitating bank and credit card transactions, and piping music to the earth below. le CS0 is thin: satellites in CS0 must remain within a narrow band only a few kilometers wide and high. le magic number where it all works is __,/8 km above mean sea level. lis orbit is now home to hundreds of spacecraft, the CS0 forms a ring of satellites around the earth, sometimes called the Clarke 8elt in honor of sci- ence ction writer Arthur C. Clarke [credited with rst describing the CS0s potential as a platform for com- munications satellites in a fA_ article for Wireless World entitled Extra-lerrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Cive worldwide Radio Coverage!). le communications satellites making up the Clarke 8elt are like a man-made ring of Saturn forged from aluminum and silicon space- craft hulls. with the CS0, the RAE Table maxes out. |t has two answers for the orbital lifetime of a spacecraft in CS0: greater than a million years and indenite. 8ecause they experience virtually no atmospheric drag, these spacecraft will stay in orbit for unimaginably long peri- ods of time. All of this was in the back of my mind that evening in led Volczans living room. After a lengthy discussion of the secret satellites that are Volczans specialtythe imaging satellites in low-earth orbits with code names like Keyhole and 0nyxthe conversation turned toward some of the CS0s secret denizens. le CS0 isnt just home to much of the worlds telecommunications infra- structure, its also home to enormous eavesdropping satellites that take a special interest in the worlds tele- communications. lese spacecraft, with code names like vortex, Vagnum, and Ventor, lurk silently among the communications satellites in the Clarke 8elt, eavesdrop- ping on radio signals emanating from the earth below. leir giant umbrella-like antennae, designed to suck up even the faintest radio signals, are reported to be the size of football elds. Volczan said that these satellites, invisible even with binoculars and most telescopes on account of their great distance from earth, were the most secret satellites in Earths orbit. | mentioned the great time scales |d found in the RAE Tables for these spacecraft. Yes, led concurred, | think about them as artifacts. Amateur satellite observers like Volczan have long understood that just beyond the reach of their bin- oculars lie some of human civilizations greatest engi- neering, and that these machines are eectively frozen in time. Vore than the cave paintings at Lascaux, the Pyramids of Ciza, the Creat wall of China, the ancient city of atalhoyk, or the nuclear waste repository outside Carlsbad, New Vexico, the ring of abandoned satellites far above the earths equator will house human civiliza- tions longest-lasting artifacts. |n fact, theres really no comparison with any other human invention. 5 le hulls of spacecraft in the CS0 do not measure their existence in seconds, hours, and years of human time, or even the thousands and millions of years of geologic time. |nstead, they inhabit the cosmic time of stars and galaxies. leir ultimate fate may lie with the sun. About four billion years from now, the Sun will have burned through most of its hydrogen and will start powering itself with helium. when that happens, our star will swell to become a red giant swallowing the earth [and any lingering geosynchronous satellites). 8ut four billion years is a long time from now. |or a bit of perspective, four billion years is about sixteen times further into the future than the advent of the dinosaurs was in the past, it is four times longer than the history of complex multicellular organisms on earth. |our bil- lion years is almost as far in the future as the formation of planet Earth is in the past. when Jim 0berg points 0erelict spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit out that space is unearthly, hes right in more ways than he meant. Just as the topology of space is at odds with everyday human experience, the time of space is utterly foreign. Placing a satellite into geosynchronous orbit means placing it into the deep and alien time of the cosmos itself. what, if anything, does it mean that the spacecraft we build are undoubtedly humankinds longest-lasting material legacy! what does it mean that, in the near or far future, there will be no evidence of human civiliza- tion on the earths surface, but our planet will remain perpetually encircled by a thin ring of long-dead space- craft! Perhaps it means nothing. 0r perhaps the idea of meaning itself breaks down in the vastness of time. 0n the other hand, what would happen if one of our own probes found a graveyard of long-dead spacecraft in orbit around one of Saturns moons! Surely it would mean something. what if we were to nd a spacecraft from a dierent timea spacecraft that contained a message or provided a glimpse into the culture that produced it! lese questions are the stu of science ction, they are themes in stories from R. P. Lovecrafts At the Moun- tains of Madness to Arthur C. Clarkes Rendezvous with Rama and Stanisaw Lems His Masters Voice. 8ut theyre also themes and questions on the outskirts of real sci- ence. 0ozens of peer-reviewed articles are devoted to the topic in the academic literature. Notional elds such as xeno archaeology and exo- archaeology propose applying methods from archaeology to alien artifacts that may be found in the future. _ |n the early f8os, technologist Robert |reitas and astronomer |rancisco valdes undertook a search for near-Earth extraterrestrial probes, coining the term search for extraterrestrial artifacts [SElA) to describe their eorts. A 0n November , ff, astronomer and asteroid-hunter James Scotti found the rst candidate object in a heliocentric orbit very similar to Earths. 0bservations of the object, dubbed ff vC, showed that it was solid, exhibited a rapid variation in brightness, and was spinning rapidly. le object caught astrono- mer 0uncan Steels attention, and he began studying it. At rst, Steel believed that ff vC was man-made, perhaps a leftover rocket body from a past space mis- sion. 8ut he quickly determined that no previous mission proles seemed to t. Next, he considered asteroids, but the similarity of ff vCs orbit to Earths was unheard of. |urthermore, Steel showed that over long periods of time, ff vCs orbit would be disrupted by Earth itself. ff vC had to have entered its present orbit in the rela- tively recent past. Lacking an explanation for a terres- trial or natural origin for the object, Steel concluded, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article for the Observatory, that ff vC is a candidate alien artifact and that the alternative explanationsthat it was a peculiar aster- oid, or a man-made bodyare both estimated to be unlikely, but require further investigation. _ le discov- ery of Earth lrojan asteroids [asteroids in stable orbits preceding Earth) in zofo, most notably an asteroid called zofo lK/, seems to provide a solid explanation for the obscure object discovered in the early fos, ff vC is probably in the same family of asteroids as zofo lK/. 8ut at the moment, ff vC is too faint to observe. |t wont be visible again until its next close encounter with Earth in zof/. lalk of alien artifacts, interstellar probes parked in near-earth orbits, and dead spacecraft oating like ghost ships occupies a gray area between science ction and hypothetical elds of social and physical science. 7 8ut thats true only from our particular temporal van- tage point. we havent yet found artifacts from an alien civilization in orbit around the earth, or on nearby plan- ets and moons, but we are creating them. |n the short term [ten to fteen years or so), a communications sat- ellite allows us to watch television stations, make phone calls, and the like. |n the longer term [fteen years to ve billion years), its a time capsule. |t is a fragment of culture frozen in time, a future alien artifact. |n the future, we are the ancient aliens. NOTES . |n 0|erg, Space Power Teory w~s||ngcn, |C Ccvernnen |r|n|ng 0ce -, |~rc| ___), _. .. |r~ser |~c|cn~|o, /n|/srcc||||0uer S~ce ~no |e 0r|| c Cecgr~|,, |n Progress in Human Geography, __) .oo/), __.0_. _. \|c|, /. w~|s|, e C~se cr |xc/rc|~ec|cg,, |n Digging Holes in Popular Culture: Archaeology and Science Fiction, |o. |||es |usse|| 0xcro 0x|cw |cc|s, .oo.), .3. ,. |c|er /. |re|~s r. ~no |r~nc|scc \~|oes, e Se~rc| cr |xr~erresr|~| /r|~cs, Acta Astronautica ..) _3_) o./o_,, |c|er /. |re|~s ~no |r~nc|scc \~|oes, / Se~rc| cr 0||ecs |e~r |e |~r||ccn |~gr~ng|~n |c|ns, Icarus __ _3_) ,__,_/. _. |unc~n See|e, S|T/ ~no __ \C, Te Observatory _ ___), /33_.
Pleasures of the telescope
An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular
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A Short History of The World: The Beginnings of Life, The Age of Mammals, The Neanderthal and the Rhodesian Man, Primitive Thought, Primitive Neolithic Civilizations, Sumer, Egypt, Judea, The Greeks and more
A Short History of The World (Unabridged): The Beginnings of Life, The Age of Mammals, The Neanderthal and the Rhodesian Man, Primitive Thought, Primitive Neolithic Civilizations, Sumer, Egypt, Judea, The Greeks and more