This is a picture taken from the sky by ground staff using a special space telescope.
The reason was that when the first satellite lost contact, the ground aerospace technology department started real-time tracking of the Beidou satellites in orbit. One of the space telescopes happened to take a picture of the second Beidou satellite before it disappeared.
Photographing and tracking Beidou satellites in high orbits is not a simple matter.
First of all, the Beidou-3 satellite navigation system consists of a total of 30 satellites from three orbits.
Among them, there are 24 medium earth orbit satellites (MEO), 3 geostationary orbit satellites (GEO), and 3 inclined geosynchronous orbit satellites (IGSO).
To capture real-time footage, you need to mobilize resources for tracking. There is no technical problem, but it takes a lot of time, and it is very difficult to capture the footage before and after the disappearance.
Fortunately, Li Zheng had already asked the intelligence investigation department and the aerospace department to contact him and prepare a plan.
Because Li Zheng actually had the plan to attack the satellite, he believed that the blue side would do the same thing when desperate.
It is essential to be on guard against others, and this is what is meant by the so-called leniency when you anticipate the enemy.
Since the first Beidou satellite disappeared, the plan was immediately launched, and all Beidou 3 network satellites were monitored, so this picture was created.
"Zoom in."
The expert responsible for investigating the matter stared at the small black spot on the picture and asked the technician to enlarge it.
As the screen gradually zooms in.
The outline of the black spot gradually appeared in front of everyone.
"Is it X37B?"
It seems that someone recognized the identity of this thing.
"No, it seems to be slightly different, and can the X37B fly to such a high orbit?"
"Didn't they only reach an orbital altitude of 805 kilometers in the previous tests? How did they kill our satellite at an altitude of more than 2,000 kilometers?"
"Did you forget that they also secretly conducted a USSF-52 mission test?"
"Ah... now that I think about it, it seems to be an improved type."
This USSF-52 mission is the latest X-37B mission of Blue Team and the seventh mission of this space vehicle.
At that time, the Blue Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office were jointly responsible for executing this task.
At that time, the Falcon Heavy rocket was responsible for carrying the X-37B into space. Although the specific mission content was not disclosed by the Blue Space Force, the original military bidding document for the USSF-52 mission clearly required an increase in payload capacity of approximately 14,000 pounds.
It is sent into geostationary transfer orbit.
This orbit is a highly elliptical ring orbiting the Blue Star at an altitude of approximately 22,000 miles.
Minus the service module, the X-37B weighed about 11,000 pounds, which just met this requirement. And judging from the altitude at the time, it seemed that this was a variant of the X-37B.
For the aerospace technology department of the Red Army, the X-37B is nothing new. Its public information mentions four functions, namely space reconnaissance and surveillance, space confrontation operations, rapid space support response, and space ground attack.
These all correspond to the "space combat capabilities" mentioned by the blue team above.
Space reconnaissance and surveillance is not difficult to understand. As the name suggests, it is the ability to monitor satellites of other countries. Of course, as an extremely advanced equipment, it is different from conventional satellite surveillance. During this period, the X-37B can change orbits in real time to achieve more
Mobile, fast reconnaissance, and even multi-sorty network reconnaissance.
In short, the X-37B has the ability to monitor satellites 24 hours a day.
Space confrontation operations refer to attacking, capturing or interfering with enemy space targets, coupled with space-to-ground strike capabilities.
Space targets include spacecraft, satellites, asteroids, space debris, etc. Therefore, as long as the blue army wants to do it, the X-37B can destroy, interfere with or capture satellites of other countries at any time.
"Yes, it is correct." The leading expert said: "Hurry up and summarize it, and send all relevant pictures and data analysis reports to the command center to provide them with reference. In addition-"
The expert remembered something: "Remind our combat commanders on the red side, if the blue side starts to take action, please be sure to fight back immediately, because now that they have taken action, in the next short period of time, maybe one day, maybe two days
It won’t be too long anyway, and our navigation and positioning satellites will disappear one after another. This is inevitable, and we must prepare immediately.”
The report was sent to the Red Side's Joint Staff Headquarters, and the news that the Blue Side had taken action on the satellite navigation system reached Li Zheng's ears.
He wasn't too surprised.
But he still frowned.
This is a step no one wants to take.
Once this step is taken, it means that one party's intention is to defeat the enemy. It is a means of H war only in close areas.
There was no room for maneuver, and Li Zheng also issued an order to attack the Red Satellite and ordered the launch of the "sky patching" plan.
Sure enough, as the red team experts expected, the blue team's attack on the Beidou system has already begun.
In the next 2 hours, one of the satellites on the red side lost contact.
Regarding this kind of attack in high-altitude extraterrestrial orbit, it is actually difficult for both the red and blue sides to successfully intercept it so far.
Interception is impossible, but mutual destruction is definitely possible.
Of course, the military technology developed by the Red Army over the years also includes anti-satellite technology.
And the number of methods is no less than that of Blue. It’s not that they can’t fight back, but they have other concerns.
Just when he was hesitating about what method to use to fight back, the intelligence staff hurried in and delivered a briefing.
The staff officer's face looked ugly.
Li Zheng guessed that this would definitely not be good news.
When he opened it, he revealed a sneer and a heavy snort from his nostrils——
"Hmph! Looking for death!"
The staff officer was a little confused.
How come the deputy commander in chief can still sneer when he sees this briefing?
The content of the briefing was not complicated, it was about a trend coming from Huang Fang.
An hour ago, Huang Fang's space center in Kashima also launched several launch vehicles. The two rockets carried a total of 8 secretly developed small kinetic energy impactors and flew directly to the geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of 30,000 kilometers.
One of these small kinetic energy impactors has already hit a red satellite in a high orbit, and it is expected that the remaining impactors will continue to be launched along the orbit to destroy the red satellites.
Moreover, just a few minutes ago, Huang Fang continuously launched Standard 3 missiles north of the mainland, shattering more than 10 Red Fang low-Earth orbit image and remote sensing satellites located above them, producing thousands of space debris, seriously threatening everyone in the world.
Low-Earth orbit space satellites, the red side's high-altitude satellite monitoring of the yellow side was once paralyzed.
At the same time, the briefing also mentioned that the yellow side not only attacked the red side's satellites, they also attacked the positioning satellites of the purple side's GLONASS navigation system...