Chinese space debris clobbers Russian satellite

CNN: A piece of space debris left over from a 2007 Chinese missile test collided with a Russian satellite earlier this year, rendering the satellite unusable, a researcher said Saturday.

The collision appears to have happened January 22. That's when it's thought a piece of the Feng Yun 1C weather satellite, which was destroyed in the 2007 missile test, accidentally hit the Russian satellite, said T.S. Kelso, a senior research astrodynamicist at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation.

The collision changed the orientation and orbit of the Russian satellite, which was being used in scientific experiments, Kelso said. It may have also damaged it.

"There has been a piece of debris catalogued by U.S. Strategic Command as a result of that collision," Kelso said. "That would suggest that at least a part of the satellite broke off because of the collision."

It was February 4 when two scientists with the Institute for Precision Instrument Engineering in Moscow noticed a change in the orbit of the satellite, known as BLITS, Kelso said.

The scientists estimated the change happened January 22. They contacted Kelso because CSSI operates a service that looks for close satellite approaches, he said.

CSSI looked for objects that may have had a nearby approach with the BLITS satellite around the time of the collision. The Chinese debris was the only object they found.

Although the predicted distance between the debris and the satellite seemed to preclude a collision, the fact that the close approach happened within 10 seconds of the change in orbit made the Feng Yun 1C debris the likely culprit, Kelso wrote in a blog post.

CSSI is now working with the Russian scientists to find out more about the collision.

BLITS is a small glass sphere that reflected laser beams for research. Because of the collision, the satellite now faces the wrong way and can't be used, Kelso said.

The collision also sped up the satellite's spin period from 5.6 seconds to 2.1 seconds, Kelso said.

China launched the Feng Yun 1C polar orbit weather satellite in 1999. It was destroyed in 2007 when China targeted it for a test of a ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile.

U.S. tracking sensors determined the missile collision created hundreds of pieces of space debris, according to a U.S. official at the time. The test prompted formal protests from the United States and several U.S. allies including Canada and Australia.

The problem of collisions involving space debris is not a new one.

"Collisions happen all the time, everywhere. Big collisions -- now those are the rare ones," said space debris expert William Schonberg, chairman of the Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Department at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

The last major space debris collision was in 2009 between Iridium 33, an operational U.S. communications satellite, and Cosmos 2251, a decommissioned Russian satellite, Kelso said.

Scientists know of only a handful of such collisions, but that's only because they happened with objects that were being monitored. Kelso and Schonberg say it's likely there are other "junk to junk" collisions involving unmonitored objects that no one knows about.

In the case of the Russian satellite in January, "it would have been very difficult to tell there had been a collision if it hadn't been for the fact that somebody was operating the satellite and noticed a collision," said Kelso.

Experts and leading government agencies have been working on the space junk problem for decades, but it's a tricky one to solve, Schonberg told CNN.

Trying to catch or deflect debris runs the risk of making the problem worse, he said. The debris could shatter into more pieces or change orbit and be on a collision course with something else.

Some soft-impact lasers can nudge objects into a calculated orbit toward Earth so they will be pulled down and burn up in the atmosphere, Schonberg said. But scientists must make sure that happens over an ocean to minimize danger to people.

"Our technology has not caught up with our desire to clean up our mess" in space, Schonberg said.

"If nothing else," said Kelso, this collision "was a bit of a reminder that it will likely happen again, and maybe we should get back to work trying to figure out what to do about it.

North Korea you suck at propaganda films!

 This one is much more interesting:

North Korea calls on troops to be ready to "annihilate the enemy."

THE TELEGRAPH China has "expressed concern" over the current situation on the Korean peninsula which is "highly complex and sensitive", said a Foreign ministry spokesman.

Meanwhile, China's state media trilled its support for Beijing's decision to vote for UN sanctions against North Korea and called for them to be tightly enforced.

"We believe the resolution is a balanced one," said the Foreign ministry spokesman. "China is objective and fair on this matter and has played a constructive role throughout the discussion at the Security Council."

But the Global Times reminded the outside world that Beijing is "caught in the middle" trying to placate both Pyongyang and Washington.

The newspaper quoted Yu Shaohua, an analyst at a Foreign ministry think tank, who called for the international community to "leave some leeway for negotiations" with Kim Jong-un.

Earlier, Kim Jong-un visited North Korean troops on the border with the South and called on them to be ready "to annihilate the enemy," the latest broadside in an increasingly bitter war of words with Seoul and Washington.

Kim was addressing troops dug into coastal positions facing Yeonpyeong island, which North Korean artillery shelled in 2010, killing four people and injuring 19.

Pictured with binoculars, Kim "stressed the need for the soldiers to keep themselves fully ready to go into action to annihilate the enemy any time an order is issued and instructed them to deal deadly blows at the enemies and blow up their positions," North Korean state media reported Friday.

Kim's comments come after the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on Pyongyang for carrying out a third nuclear test in February.

bin Laden spokesman arrested - to stand trial in U.S.

BBC: A man described as a spokesman for Osama Bin Laden has been arrested and will be tried in New York City, the US has confirmed.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was captured within the last week in Jordan, Congressman Peter King said on Thursday.

Mr Abu Ghaith is Bin Laden's son-in-law and played a role in plotting the attacks of 9/11, US officials said.

Bin Laden was killed in a May 2011 raid on his hideout in Pakistan by a team of US commandos.

Mr Abu Ghaith is scheduled to appear in a federal court on Friday on charges of conspiracy to kill United States nationals.

"Sulaiman Abu Ghaith held a key position in al-Qaeda, comparable to the consigliere in a mob family or propaganda minister in a totalitarian regime," said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos in a statement.

"He used his position to threaten the United States and incite its enemies."

'One by one'

A teacher and mosque preacher in Kuwait, Mr Abu Ghaith was stripped of his Kuwaiti citizenship after 9/11.

Justice department officials say Mr Abu Ghaith served alongside Bin Laden from May 2001 to 2002, speaking on behalf of al-Qaeda and warning that attacks similar to 9/11 would continue.

Specifically, on 12 September 2001, he appeared with Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to warn the US that a "great army is gathering against you" and called upon "the nation of Islam" to do battle against "the Jews, the Christians and the Americans," according to court records.

He was reportedly smuggled to Iran sometime in 2002.

A Jordanian security official told the Associated Press that Mr Abu Ghaith was handed over last week to US officials under both countries' extradition treaties.

Mr King called the arrest a "very significant victory" in the fight against al-Qaeda.

"One by one, we are getting the top echelons of al-Qaeda," the Republican congressman said. "I give the administration credit for this. It's steady and it's unrelenting and it's very successful."

Mr Abu Ghaith's trial will mark one of the first prosecutions of senior al-Qaeda leaders on US soil.

Since 9/11, 67 foreign terror suspects have been convicted in US federal courts, according to data obtained by the group Human Rights First.

READ MORE AT THE BBC

Breaking: PACAF forces on alert- N Korea breaking pact

BBC: North Korea says it is scrapping all non-aggression pacts with South Korea, closing its hotline with Seoul and closing the crossing point between the two countries.

The announcement follows a fresh round of UN sanctions against Pyongyang over its controversial nuclear programme.

The UN resolution was in response to the North's nuclear test last month.

Earlier, Pyongyang vowed to use its right to a pre-emptive nuclear strike against its "aggressors".

The announcement, carried on North Korea's state news agency, says the North is cancelling all non-aggression pacts with the South and closing the main Panmunjom border crossing inside the Demilitarized Zone.

It said it was notifying the South that it was "immediately" cutting off the North-South hotline.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is also reported to have visited front-line military units that were involved in the 2010 shelling of a South Korean island.

He is said to have urged the soldiers there to keep themselves ready to "annihilate the enemy" at any time, and reconfirmed so-called "enemy targets" on five islands in the West Sea.

Earlier, the UN Security Council unanimously backed Resolution 2094, imposing the fourth set of sanctions against the North.

The resolution targets North Korean diplomats, cash transfers and access to luxury goods.

It imposes asset freezes and travel bans on three individuals and two firms linked to North Korea's military.

Speaking after the vote, US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said the document "strongly condemns" Pyongyang's actions.

She said the sanctions would "further constrain" North Korea's ability to develop its nuclear programme.

Ms Rice also warned that the UN would "take further significant actions" if Pyongyang were to carry out another nuclear test.