Radha Krishna Kavuluru

RISAT-1 , India's  Radar Satellite disappeared suddenly in 2016 after it's launch in 2012. In the years that followed ( 2016-2018 ) many incidents/updates given , pushed RISAT-1 Into more mystery around it's disappearance. 

Almost after 13 years after the launch of satellite and 9 years after it's disappearance , can we get an update now?

What were the events that actually transpired? 

A thread (1/n) 🧵

PS : A very un-related and not much talked about correlation is also present in 6th part of this thread.

Few know RISAT-1 wasn't India's first radar satellite. After 26/11 Mumbai attacks, India rush-purchased RISAT-2 from Israel for $200M. RISAT-1 came later - India's first indigenous radar satellite, built with hard-earned expertise.

For 4 years RISAT-1 watched India's borders. Until Sept 30, 2016... (2/n)

On Sept 30 2016, JSPoC systems detected something alarming around RISAT-1's orbit. The Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) : Watch dogs of US Space Force - running a global network of radars that track every artificial object in orbit, from active satellites to tiny debris.

They detected that a debris generating event occurred extremely close to RISAT-1. The event created 16 pieces out of which 15 decayed and one was catalogued on 6 October 2016 under NORAD ID: 41797 Within days, 15 fragments burned up in the atmosphere.

One mysterious piece (41797) lingered, was tracked for 6 days, then vanished forever. (3/n)

When ISRO was asked about the concerning news , the then ISRO's spokes person replied that RISAT-1 was functioning normally. They had corrected some anomaly but had nothing to do with event reported in Magazine.

What magazine was it? What was it's reputation? (4/n) 

NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News (ODQN) is a publication that tracks and reports on the growing issue of space debris. It is produced by NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, a division of the Johnson Space Center, and is regarded as one of the most authoritative sources on space debris monitoring and mitigation strategies.

NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News (ODQN) is a publication that tracks and reports on the growing issue of space debris. It is produced by NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, a division of the Johnson Space Center, and is regarded as one of the most authoritative sources on space debris monitoring and mitigation strategies.

This event was being taken extremely seriously by the community around the world. A month later on 3 November 2016, RISAT-1 data was declared unavailable on ESA's Copernicus Space Component Data Access portal due to satellite outage. (5/n)

Now, the most interesting part.

While we hear conflicting reports from the 2 sides, just give it a thought. 30 September 2016, what was happening in the India that day? Infact personally that day was one of the most happiest day of my life. 

Just in the early morning of that day Indian army went deep into Pakistan's territory and did a surgical strike.

After just a few hours, when the satellite was over china, the debris event manifests. Any connection behind these two events? While there are a lot of theories that were floating around , I can only point you towards one event that happened 3 years later.

India achieved it's ASAT capability in 2019.
(6/n)

On 26 July 2017, Department of Space released names of its operational satellites in a reply to a Parliamentary query and RISAT-1 was not included in the list. (7/n) 

And finally on 13 February 2018 , ISRO mentioned in it's annual report that the "Anomalies have been observed towards the end of 5 years mission life and satellite is no more operational." 

(8/n) 

It has been 9 years since Surgical strike. Can we actually know what happened to RISAT-1 atleast now ? This would throw a lot of light on the systems that needs to be developed and reinforced for the stability and security of Space assets of India, in any case.

(end)