Morning all Been following the discussion about X-37B spying on Chinese satellite. I was approached by a British journalist based in Florida writing freelance for The TIMES newspaper of London for my comment on the article as I had been involved in tracking it. Here is what I said at the time: "I am familiar with the story about the X-37B spying on Tiangong-1 and I frankly dont attach much significance to it. The X-37B was placed in orbit quite some time before Tiangong-1 and since then has not done any significant orbital changes to indicate any deviation from their original intentions. It is of course possible that they might want to inspect Tiangong-1 if in the vicinity of it but the fact that the orbits of the two craft are similar should not have any significance attached to it as there are a large number of other satellites in similar orbits - space is pretty congested. Since the mission and capabilities of X-37B are only known to those that manage its program etc any speculation by the general public is nothing but speculation. I am sure that if the USA wanted to spy on X-37B they could probably do it better with other spy satellites - for example the KH-11 spacecraft which have done recent manoeuvers but then again since these missions are classified the reasons for the changes are strictly speculation. In the meantime Ill do a closer check on the orbits of X37B and Tiangong -1 and see just how well they match but at this point in time I am not expecting anything startling or to change my opinion that its meaningless speculation. --------------------------------------------------------- and in a follow up enail to this I further wrote: I guess Spaceflight magazine is keen on the theory as it makes good press/publicity material. I dont know the person who wrote the article-in fact I havent seen the article as such, but I suspect he is not a satellite tracker and is not that familiar with what goes on "upstairs". Being a Dr does not automatically make anyone an "expert"! Cheers Greg _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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