The fourth defective RORSAT was launched in late 1987. After it exhausted its power supply the satellite’s primary propulsion system failed to push it into storage orbit. The backup did fire, but lifted it into an incorrect orbit 80 kilometres below its intended altitude. Over the following decades the satellite’s orbit steadily decayed. It was due to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere sometime in early 2017.
Henri stares at the RORSAT as they glide towards it. He has painstakingly tracked it for the last three years. It is 11 metres long, a metre and half wide and could only be Russian. Ungainly, inelegant and fussy, it instantly offends the Frenchman’s refined sense of design. Six long, spindly antennae protrude from a fuselage covered in the dull grey paint Soviets favoured for their military hardware.
Atlantis’s external control thrusters fire and swing it towards the satellite. Nico gently works the controller, eyes glued to the monitor in front of him. It displays three views of the satellite fed by three cameras inside Atlantis’s payload bay. The shuttle edges closer, parallel but slightly below the RORSAT, no more than six metres away.
‘How’s that?’ Nico’s question is directed at Martie Burnett.
‘Fine, hold it there.’
The thrusters fire once more and the shuttle holds station. Henri turns to Martie, his gaze steady. ‘You’re up.’
Feet secure in velcro floor straps that stop her floating away, Martie stands at the rear of the flight deck and studies a small video monitor within the instrument panel. It displays the same three images of the Russian satellite that Henri and Nico see.
She raises her eyes from the monitor and looks out the cabin’s rear window at the Canadarm, a remote-controlled robotic manipulator connected to the inside of the shuttle’s payload bay. Designed and built, unsurprisingly, by Canadians, it resembles a human arm, except it’s 15 metres long and 40 centimetres wide. Articulated at its shoulder, elbow and wrist, the giant white appendage ends in a clever mechanical device called the effector.
Martie believes the Canadarm is the most important system on the shuttle. Without it the spacecraft is just an expensive crane without a hook. She can grab anything with the effector. On her two previous trips to orbit she’d snagged a communications satellite, the Hubble, even an errant toolbox. She’d never missed.
She works the hand controller located on the panel before her with smooth, direct movements and watches the Canadarm rise from its resting place. It eases across the shuttle’s open bay doors then reaches into the darkness. She triggers a switch and the image on the monitor flicks to a view from a camera positioned on the effector.
Martie scans the satellite for a point to attach. If she touches it but doesn’t grab hold it could scoot away and they’ll have to chase it. Considering how long it took to find she knows they don’t have the fuel for that. So she can’t miss. She’d promised Henri she could do this and she won’t let him down.
Martie watches the monitor intently as the effector moves, scans the satellite’s cylindrical body. Around its midsection are a series of large bolts, each about eight centimetres high. One of them looks like a promising target to latch onto. She moves the effector towards it.
Henri studies the monitor. He knows how important this moment is. He’s invested millions of his own money, years of his time and co-opted his crew all for this moment, so he needs the next two minutes to go smoothly. He turns, watches Martie as she focuses on the monitor and moves the hand controller. She is the centrepiece around which the mission was built. Hers was the perfect confluence of skill and circumstance. If she had rebuffed him when he first sought to recruit her then they wouldn’t be here and none of this would be possible.
He takes a deep breath, forces himself to relax. He knows she’s done this many times before. She’ll be fine.
‘Shit!’ Martie stares at the monitor and says it again. ‘Shit.’ The effector grabbed the bolt. Then she tightened its hold to pull the satellite towards the payload bay and the bolt snapped off, sending the satellite into a slow spin.
She releases the broken bolt from the effector, sends it flipping away, then searches for another spot to grab on. One that won’t snap.
She doesn’t notice the longest of the satellite’s six antennae until it rotates into view and slams into the Canadarm, sends a shock wave through the shuttle. ‘Damn.’ The antenna lies across the Canadarm as the satellite continues to rotate. The antenna bends. Martie wills it to snap.
It doesn’t. The bent antenna springs back into shape and spins the satellite in the opposite direction, drives it away from the shuttle. Fast.
If she doesn’t grab it now they won’t get it back. By the time Nico can swing the shuttle around it’ll be so far away they won’t have the fuel to retrieve it.
Martie searches the satellite, looks for another spot to grab on. In six seconds it’ll be out of reach.
She jams the hand controller forward. The effector darts towards the satellite, reaches the end of its range, clamps down on one of the antennae as it swings past.
The satellite stops spinning but its momentum swings it underneath the Canadarm. The antenna bends, and bends — and snaps.
‘Christ.’ The satellite tumbles towards Atlantis. If it hits it’ll punch a hole in the fuselage and the instant depressurisation will mean a gruesome death for everyone on board.
The satellite’s 10 metres away and moves quickly. Martie flicks the hand controller. The Canadarm flips up, pivots, and the effector releases the broken antenna. The satellite’s five metres away. The Canadarm shoots towards it. Three metres away. The effector clamps onto the satellite’s rear sensor hub. One metre away. The Canadarm draws it to a stop. Ten centimetres from Atlantis.
Everyone stares out the windscreen at the satellite, shocked by how close it is, relieved it isn’t closer.
Martie releases a long breath and nods to Henri, who returns that half-smile of his. She looks back at the monitor and gently works the hand controller. The Canadarm draws the satellite away from the shuttle, swings it around and deposits it in the payload bay.
Rhonda fixes her gaze on the Frenchman. ‘So this is about stealing a satellite?’
‘It’s not just any satellite.’
‘What is it then —?’ Then she understands. ‘Kosmos 1900.’
Henri nods, impressed. ‘Exactly.’
Kosmos 1900. Rhonda realises that’s what the Frenchman was talking about earlier. He said ‘Kosmos’, not ‘cosmos’. Obscure information about the satellite floods back to her, details she hasn’t thought about since she was at MIT.
Many satellites use radioactive material to produce their power, primarily non-weapons-grade plutonium-238. The power is generated by the natural decay of the nuclear material. For safety’s sake, the radioactive material is fabricated in a hardened ceramic form that is all but impervious to shock. If the satellite explodes or burns up on re-entry the ceramic breaks into large chunks that can’t spread into the atmosphere.
Not so the Kosmos 1900. That RORSAT satellite is powered by a BES-5 nuclear reactor, one of the few that use such a power plant. The reactor’s core consists of 30 kilograms of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium-235, a fissile material with a half-life of 703800000 years. That raw nuclear material is not fabricated in hardened ceramic form but packed into a comparably fragile metal casing.
Rhonda remembers this because, in 1978, a RORSAT satellite identical to Kosmos 1900 crashed in Canada and spread its uranium cargo across a 600-kilometre path from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake. Luckily for the Canadians the area was unpopulated. The clean-up took four months yet only one per cent of the nuclear fuel was recovered.