Iran reportedly bought an in-orbit Chinese satellite to target US military sites in the Middle East — purchase agreement included ongoing ground control services based in China

They are pushy, always tryin to upsell me on massive balloon spy systems

We’re going beyond the cloud! 

... and when I would buy one my neighbors would call me a creep!!! /s

I heard people saying AI will kill all sass business. Wonder if it is going to affect ssass too 🤣

God damn Sassy SaaS's

Ssuss Amogus Satelite

China Overhead Spying Co

Above and Beyond Cloud Service

But i am assuming most of these are govt controlled who can do businesss with? Like SpaceX couldn’t - even if they wanted - rent satellites to Iran and North Korea right?

Little known fact, China also has their own version of GPS called BDS. Which means if they killed our version, they could still use theirs for tactical advantage. But then there's also a European and Russian version, too. And I believe starlink has a way to provide location services, too. So, crisis averted?

To add, in this particular case, they are not simply buying data service. They have bought the platform and the control of the platform, contract gives them constant data offload through other ground control points around the world. That way, the delay is short enough for target confirmation before launching and for relevant BDA.

Iran did buy this commercial satellite in 2024, not sure why the media is trying to spin this as if they bought it just now other than to somehow blame China for the US not winning in 2 weeks.

The Strait of Hormuz is OPEN!!! Some say more open than ever. The United States does not NEED the Strait of Hormuz. Get some delayed courage and take it yourself. The war is WON! The biggest most EPIC win ever. The Strait of Hormuz is CLOSED!!! The United States will open it for the rest of the world. The Strait of Hormuz is OPEN!!!

In fact he is even going to give me a big, fat hug.

According to the FT it cost 37.5 million.

They ship $50 billion a year worth of oil to China every year. And they are not being paid with their worthless local currency. It’s just the locals that are being paid with and have to purchase goods with the (internationally) worthless local currency.

It’s geopolitics. China would even provide that for free, the incentive is there.

Maybe just gave them oil. Delivery not included. 

Are there still protests in Iran or have they died off?

Since the start of the conflict Iran was demanding protection money from vessels in the strait, something like $2M per, and the sources said it had to be paid in Yuan. Now we know exactly why.

Nah, just anti-satellite missiles. They’ve been a thing since satellites became a thing. The first ones were nukes! Yay!

Most satellites in orbit today are in fact commercial in nature. Companies or governments usually purchase satellites which are then manufactured and launched on demand at a price. In this case they purchased one which was already in space, just changing its ownership.

This *is* Xi’s big fat hug.

Every choice has its undisclosed pandoras box. Which Nato opened with Extended intel and satellite assist for ukraine.

Important to note that the 5m resolution was the previous satellite (nearly worthless for intel purposes) and the new satellite they bought offers .5m resolution which is 100x more detail (10x in both length and width)

5m resolution is 1 pixel per 5m squared. A house at that resolution could be a 2x3 pixel blob. You need 1m resolution to even tell if there is *A Vehicle* present, and ideally 1-10cm resolution to identify types of vehicles. At 1m you wouldn’t be able to distinguish truck from car. A 5m resolution photo is probably good for identifying ships though…

As far as I can understand, it doesn't, at least on its own. The MP would depend on the area. A "5-metre resolution" means that each pixel in an image represents a 5m x 5m area on the ground. The total megapixels depend on the size of the area being photographed. So, 1km x 1km would be 0.04MP 100km x 100km would be 400MP That's my ELI5 answer. You want more, search google.

No way China didn't obtain hard compensation for this, likely in the form of c**** or free resources or control of resources in Iran. China isn't stupid, they wouldn't stir the geopolitical pot like this without obtaining considerable benefits.

Let's try to avoid causing Kessler Syndrome.

Lets not think of satelites as potential targets until we first find a way to economically get rid of debris from orbit

Probably need to shoot all future potential satellites for sale too while they’re at it.

The country that should be boycotted is Israel for being a terrorist nation and a brutal tyrannical regime that murdered hundreds of thousands of people recently and is trying to cleanse millions more.

Feel free to throw away whatever device you're posting this on (no one will miss you LOL)

Do The Urinated States of Epsteinica next....

Taiwan was making their own nukes before it got stopped by the USA lol The US want dependant puppets not independent actors

And then sell them one of his

China is literally selling it to them, not giving it to them free. 

When it comes to objects in orbit, it can be a bit tricky not only with shooting one down, but just finding it to begin with. There are a LOT of satellites in orbit even now, each passing over places like the United States, Russia, China, Iran, etc. even despite being launched from other nations with a great many reasons to utilize those orbits to spy on whoever they can, so finding and narrowing it down means first trying to distinguish which satellite is THE satellite rather than accidentally targeting one that might be operated by Russia, or Spain, or even Canada. Hitting the wrong one means potentially diminishing the reach of an intelligence apparatus we lean heavily on to keep people alive, or it could even mean so much as provoking military giants like India into targeting our own because we shot one down that looked just like one being used by China but was in reality strictly being utilized for Indian national defense. Then comes the issue of the physics in space, where there are far less in the way of atmospheric conditions to deal with, borderline none in fact. Newtonian physics in the first degree are given nigh absolute free reign to wreak all sorts of havoc. Destroying a satellite would require some degree of force, and not the sort that can be slow and tempered. It has to be fast, as fast as the Satellite, which is in itself already moving ridiculously fast in orbit, and there's just not enough fuel in any modern munitions today to launch a weapon that can 'catch up', so the most efficient way is to just intercept from the shortest avenue possible, detonate an explosive as close as possible, and hope that the shotgun scatter of shrapnel will pierce the exterior of the target satellite enough to disable vital electronics within. Except that this is a pretty risky play too, because again, exploding one thing in orbit means throwing shrapnel that can and will explode anything it hits through sheer kinetic force, so if any of that shrapnel misses the target, or any fragmentation from the satellite occurs when (if) it is disabled, then that shrapnel or fragmentation is then thrown outward (hopefully DOWN towards the atmosphere, but not always) in ways that risk hitting OTHER satellites, and the force of that shrapnel and/or satellite fragmentation risks yielding the same catastrophically explosive force capable of exploding additional satellites which has the potential to create a cascading effect known as the Kessler Scenario, which isn't permanent and isn't too likely to happen fully, but serves as a practical demonstration as to WHY we don't just randomly shoot down satellites. The physics up in orbit are different, and our weapons just aren't precise enough yet to ensure we won't accidentally hit something we didn't intend to, which is a big deal considering they only send what they NEED into orbit.

Then no satellite is safe anymore since most of the satellites in orbit belong to either US or China while both of them have the capability to shoot down satellites.

As seen on the way it's more probable that f15 is shot down by friendly fire