A Connection to a Remote Place
Joanna Griffin
University of Westminster
2003
"He says that technology is
dangerous, that it detracts from our relationship with the world..."
(Maurice Blanchot The Conquest of Space 1961)
Introduction
"A
connection to a remote place" is the title of a piece of work I made for
the Internet about satellites. I wanted to see if I could make a piece of work
on the Internet that had a sense of being connected to these very remote pieces
of technology. I included extracts in the piece from Maurice Blanchot's essay
"The Conquest of Space" written after the first manned Space flight
by Gargarin. It is an essay about the newly found space of Space. It
contemplates the possibility, or rather impossibility, of imagining what it is
like to be in a placeless environment, and how to comprehend something that
only one person has experienced.
"...it is extraordinary, we have left the earth...He
has felt, at least for a moment, the sense of something decisive: far away - in
an abstract distance of pure science - removed from the common condition
symbolized by the force of gravity, there was a man, no longer in the sky, but
in space, in a space that was no being or nature but is the pure and simple
reality of a measurable (almost) void. Man, but a man with no horizon."[1]
During my
research I found that, the process of tracking satellites, finding out why they
were in orbit and looking at the images they took, had analogies with a
previous film-based piece of work I had made where I tracked a police
helicopter. For six months I filmed the MD902 helicopter whenever it came near
my city centre flat. We developed an odd dialogue of undisclosed watching. Some
of the pilots knew about my project and they knew where I lived. I never felt
clear to what extent their sorties were for my benefit or whether they were
following a crime. I had no way of telling what they were looking at. The view
from above is privileged information. I worked from a grounded viewpoint with
my video camera, monitoring and recording the helicopter's movements, surveying
the surveyor.[2]
Satellites
are used as relay stations to transmit and receive communications signals, but
many, like the helicopter are equipped with powerful cameras. Unlike the
helicopter though, they are to all purposes invisible and this invisibility has
made them highly coveted surveillance technology.
Information
gathering and invisibility make for an insidious combination. Surveillance
suggests a power relationship in which one side can see the other without
themselves being seen. It is a word that implies a matrix of control. Modern
technologies have enabled the distancing between observer and observed to
increase. This has created architectures of uncertainty and intimidation, but
it equally gives security and new knowledge.
This study
is about exploring a connection to satellites via the Internet. It questions
the ways it is possible to 'look back' at satellites using the Internet,
instead of the camcorder I turned on the helicopter. For the Internet can
provide a perfect circle of observation, in which you can track their movements
and see what they see. You can survey the surveyor, surveying you. Within this
circle of observation I want to test whether it is possible to sense the
vertigo of the view from above through the mediation of this technology,
whether it is possible to use satellites to experience a connection to Space.
Chapter One
The Privileged View
The Global
Information Technology Report 2001-2002 analyses the direction technology is
taking, who it is benefiting, how it is being used and going to be used. John
Gage of Sun Microsystems writes about the continuing decentralisation of information.
The Internet, developed by the military to be a non-hierarchical communication
and information system that would still operate if part of it happened to be
blown up, is distributed over a network of servers from which information is
downloaded with a myriad of routes for data to travel along. Gage proposes that
a further decentralisation of information already seen in 'peer-to-peer' and
'edge-to-edge' systems will see information stored on and shared from personal
computers rather than servers. Taking his cue from Kofi Annan's acceptance
speech for the 2001 Nobel Peace prize, which places value on the individual[3],
he sees information from satellite technology only realising its potential when
it can be applied locally by individuals to their particular circumstances.
"Tomorrow, using new ICT's [Information and
Communication Technology] of location and communication, we will be able to see
how many children die in a village, or the life expectancy for a mother in a
neighbourhood, or whether there is clean water or sanitation for a school, a
village, or a street. We will see who lives and who dies. We will see ourselves
in ways we cannot today. And for the first time, all of us will be able to
see."[4]
Against
this vision it is fair to say that satellite technology has operated since its
inception as a guarded technology, developed largely away from democratic
control by the military, governments and research institutions. The fragility
and expense of the technology has kept it out of the public realm, unlike the
Internet, which with similar origins has wholeheartedly become a civilian
technology, a medium for democracy. It seems that there is also, besides the
economic constraints of the technology, a psychology attached to the
positioning of satellites in outer space that has influenced the way the
technology is used. Barriers that are to do with the symbolic dominance and
emotional detachment inscribed in the act of looking down from above.
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The
Panoptican
Jeremy
Bentham's Penitentiary Panopticon
In
Foucault's study of power, Discipline and Punish, he maps out the ways
in which a dominant visual observation point is used to control. From the
prisons to school rooms to military camps, hospitals and urban design, he
studies the ways humanity has found to control the many by the few. The
'Panopticon' is an architectural model that Foucault uses to explore the idea
of 'Panopticism'. Based on plans of a prison made by Jeremy Bentham in 1843, a
Panopticon is a circular building with prison cells around the edge and a
central tower. The open structure means that from the tower all the cells can
be observed. The cells even have a window on the outside to shed more light on
the prisoner's movements. It is a design that reverses the medieval idea of
punishment in darkness and underground. Here it is light and visibility that
trap and punish the inmates. What was so effective about the Panopticon as a
model was that it could exert power beyond the sum of its parts, merely through
its structure. The inmate would feel they were being watched, whether they were
or not:
"The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the
see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever
seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being
seen."[5]
What
Foucault draws out is how pervasive this model became in all forms of social
structuring. He takes from the Panopticon the idea of panopticism as an
abstract system of political power:
"But the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream
building: it is a diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form;
its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be
represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure
of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific
use."[6]
However the
ideal of seeing without being seen is not a one way process. Foucault discusses
how the role of observer and observed can become fluid when the structure by
which power is exerted is made transparent.
"This Panopticon, subtly arranged so that any observer
may observe, at a glance, so many individuals, also enables everyone to come
and observe any of the observers."
While the
Panopticon is highly efficient at controlling, it is also an open structure and
this means that there is an extent to which the exercise of power is checked.
Ideally, the power structure becomes socially controlled. The playing out of
this theory can be found in the physical architecture as well as the political
and social architecture created by the positioning of satellites in Space.
Panopticism and the Cold War
The trigger
for Space-located technology was the launch in 1957 of the Soviet Sputnik 1.
"At a weight of 184 pounds, travelling in an orbit 560
miles above the earth, this spacecraft was far more than a scientific or
technical achievement; it had tremendous psychological and political
impact."[7]
It was
extremely frightening for the West to discover that a Soviet satellite was
orbiting the earth. It meant that the Soviets had the technology to blast a
nuclear bomb at the States. The U.S. felt it was being beaten as much by the
demonstration of technological achievement as by the implied power afforded by
this position in space. The perceived threat of the Sputnik satellite relates
to the audacity of the Soviet's transfer of the Panopticon structure to a
global scale. The positioning of this technology means that satellites always
imply the most ambitious demonstration of the architecture of panopticism
possible. The distance of satellites from observation or attack and the massive
'footprint' of the earth's surface with which they connect, make them appear
invincible to their owners. Nonetheless this same distance also means their
activity is exposed. This is a description of the observations made of Chinese
satellites:
"Although it was reported that China 3 was
intentionally brought down, this is doubtful since the satellite had already
been in orbit for 50 days and its orbital characteristics appeared to be those
of a decaying satellite.
Since the launch of China 3, China 4 and China 5 have been
orbited, the latter with orbital parameters similar to those of China 3. It is
interesting to note that, unlike that of the other Chinese satellites, the
orbital inclination of China 4 was 62¼ and after six days a data capsule was
recovered; a large object remained in orbit for a further 27 days. China 4 may
thus be the first Chinese reconnaissance satellite."[8]
This
description comes from a book published in 1978 which attempts to give
information about covert activity in outer Space. It illustrates the tension
during the Cold War of the process of undisclosed watching. The Chinese, like
the Russians and the Americans were putting photographic reconnaissance
satellites into Space to spy on each other's activities. At the same time,
observers on earth were able to glean something of what the other side was up
to. Space became both an arena of covert operations and a spectacular
amphitheatre for each side to watch each other, and if they wanted, to display
their technological prowess. The Sputnik launch in 1957 was a demonstration of
military capability disguised as scientific discovery. The Americans quickly
followed suit with their Space Programme. Presented to the public as a voyage
of discovery, it demonstrated back to the Soviets, American ballistic power and
their ability to operate in Space.
The 'Space
Race' however was more or less a diversion from the massive spying operation
being conducted from orbiting satellites. Corona was the code name for a U.S.
spy satellite operating in the late sixties. Previously the Americans had used U2 planes to fly on spying
missions over Soviet airspace, but this was technically illegal as countries
have rights over their airspace. An American U2 plane was shot down during a
reconnaissance flight over Russia. In Space, the satellites were safe from
attack. Furthermore, in one day Corona was able to amass as much photographic
information as the entire U2 programme. The intelligence gatherings, including
photographs and documents, of the Corona spy programme were released by the
Clinton administration in 1995 as part of a public relations exercise to
demonstrate the historical importance of U.S. intelligence and to suggest a
degree of openness. This image was thought to be a Soviet missile base at Dolon Air Field, USSR and was taken on 20 Aug 1966.
Film from
the satellite would be sent back to earth in a capsule, which would parachute
down into the sea and be recovered, or collected mid-air. The film would then
be processed and analysed. These are notes from images of Vietnam and China
taken by the Corona satellite.
The report
has details of occupied and unoccupied sites observed. There is a cool
detachment to the description "Sam site.... has been bombed. All launch
positions are destroyed and the guidance area is partially destroyed. Therefore
this site is dropped from NPIC listings." It is the style of military
communication to be objective and detached, but it may also derive from the
images themselves. There is a sequence in Patriot Games, where from the
Pentagon Harrison Ford and his team watch an IRA training camp in Africa being
ambushed via satellite. One by one the infrared glow of each body fades as each
person is shot. The drama of the scene is in Harrison Ford's unease at the
cool, distant viewing of this clinical operation. The images fascinate, but
they harbour unease. There is a horror in the distancing of the real experience
through the image and the satellite technology. It is the problem that worried
Baudrillard in relation to the Gulf War. What can we really know of things that
reach us only as images through technology, that we have no tangible experience
of.
As well as
the emotional distancing of remote sight, politics meant that the images and
information from the Corona satellite programme were kept from the public even
though the reconnaissance missions revealed that the Soviets had far fewer arms
than the Americans had thought. The 'missile gap' that Kennedy had told the
public existed, and which kept people needlessly in fear that the Russians had
more bombs than them, was proved untrue by the satellite observations. However
people had no access to this information and keeping it quiet meant that the
U.S. government could continue to justify spending on defence.
With the
view from above available only to the privileged, observers were left to glean
something of what their and other governments were up to by looking at the
satellites from earth. Kettering Boys School was apparently a major source of
information on Soviet Cosmos satellites according to a report from the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published in 1978,
from which the previous description of the Chinese satellites comes. It is
written using data from ground -based observations. It explains how satellites
could be tracked and identified with a certain degree of accuracy:
"The Cosmos series covers a variety of missions and it
is only through the study of repetitive patterns in orbit, the kind of debris
associated with flights, the types of signals they transmit and the timing of
satellite launches that it has been possible to classify most of the individual
satellites by their various missions."[9]
The deep paranoia
generated by the cycles of observation during the Cold War were self
perpetuating in that increased levels of observation was always argued to be
the reason for averting war. Richard Garwin a physicist who was one of the
founders of the Corona programme said of it, " I
do believe that this kind of intelligence from space has certainly helped to
preserve the peace. It kept the Cold War from developing to a hot war."
Like Foucault's Panopticon, it was felt that power could be regulated through
obsessive observation, but the Cold War effectively created a closed
architecture, " a sort of dark room into which individuals spied," [10]
and not the transparent, self-regulating system that a modern society could
aspire to:
The
Regulation of Outer Space
The Cold
War set up a two-power hegemony in space. Alongside these developments, were
constant diplomatic efforts to control what was essentially an arms race,
culminating in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The perceived success of the Treaty
was the agreement that nuclear weapons would not be put in Space, on the moon
or other celestial bodies:
"Parties to the Treaty
undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear
weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons
on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other
manner." [11]
The Treaty
is fairly brief and explicit. It is an agreement that Space should be
stateless, used only for peaceful purposes and to further co-operation and understanding. It has been signed by ninety-one
countries. The Russians and Americans gave the appearance of cooperation in
their joint Space missions. However, the peaceful objectives of the Treaty were
already undermined, Space was never a good place to put bombs. The United
States placed their Trident missiles in the deep oceans rather than deep Space,
in nuclear powered submarines and they used Space to hold a navigation system
capable of 'positioning' a missile on target.
The arms
race that made the Treaty necessary established satellite technology initially
as the preserve of the two super powers. While this situation of state control
and control by the few has shifted, the current state of deployment of
satellites has become entrenched in this history. Other factors that have led
to privileged access to the view from above, besides the politics of the Cold
War arms race and its link to the psychology of the Panopticon, has been the realisation that there are
prime locations in Space.
Arthur C.
Clarke is credited with theorising that a satellite could be put in orbit that
would stay over a fixed position on the earth. This orbit over the equator is
known as the geostationary or geosynchronous orbit. Clarke was interested
particularly in radio transmission. He calculated that with three satellites in
geostationary orbit, bouncing signals to earth stations and back up to Space,
it would be possible to send and receive radio signals anywhere in the world.[12]
This orbit
over the equator has particular value because it is the only place that
satellites can orbit over fixed spots on the earth and world coverage can be
achieved with the least number of satellites and therefore the lowest cost. To
achieve world coverage with satellites outside this orbit requires many more,
for instance a minimum of eighteen is suggested in one book.[13]
With Space
declared as having no national boundaries, the mechanisms to decide how the
geostationary orbit is used have relied on co-operation between states. There
has also been a technical need to apportion parts of the radio spectrum to
satellites in a similar manner to the way earth-based radio waves had to be
regulated to avoid interference between stations. The International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) became a technical overseer to the satellite
network initially to allocate the spectrum. This 'technical' remit has been
seen as the best way to ensure a non-political overseeing of the development of
telecommunications internationally. In 1982 the liberal politics of this open
regulation was seen in a positive light:
"The manner by which the International
Telecommunications Union efficiently, economically and equitably apportions the
radio spectrum and the recognition by member States - which constitute almost
the whole of the terrestrial community - that the geostationary orbit is a
limited natural resource, which must be similarly shared, gives new hope for
the future."[14]
However the
allocation of the geostationary orbit has happened on nothing more then a
'first come, first served' basis. The laissez-faire approach to regulation in
Space has in more recent times been challenged by developing nations. While
Space in principle is not owned by any nations, the geostationary orbit is
dominated by a few states. In 1979 the USA and Soviets held 62% of the orbital
slots. This led to a challenge in 1976 by eight equatorial nations, known as
the Bogot‡ Declaration. They cited 'res patrimonio', their legal right to the
airspace above their country. While they were unsuccessful in claiming any
ownership for themselves, the fact of the protest highlights the persistent
drive of this technology to favour the states that first develop it. It also
highlights the difficulty other nations then find in participating,
particularly those that could benefit from technology that that will allow them
to 'leapfrog' development stages. A country for instance that has no cable
infrastructure for telephones, internet or cable television, could use a
satellite to transmit data and thus avoid the cost of laying cables. New
technologies are recognised as having huge potential to help developing
countries, which is why the 'digital divide', the gap between rich and poor
countries' access to digital technology, has been made a pressing issue
internationally. At the 2000 G8
summit in Okinawa, the Okinawa Charter set up the Dot Force task group to
create strategies to address the issue.
Kelly Lee's
study of the International Telecommunications Union makes a strong case for the
consistent bias in the development of telecommunications globally and
particularly with regard to satellites, caused by neo-liberal policies and
deregulation. In regard to the laissez-faire approach to orbital slots, she
points out:
"By 1982, 80 per cent of orbital slots were occupied by
core states, and an estimated 97 per cent of artificial objects in outer space
were either American or Soviet. Many of these were in highly coveted locations
which left latecomers to bear the cost of using a less optimal slot."[15]
The coveted
spots are in the geostationary orbit where a satellite can remain fixed over
one point on earth and transmit continually to allow for telecommunications
over a defined area. It is here that most of the slots have already been taken
by the more affluent nations and despite charters and task forces, there appear
to be no mechanisms to reverse the process. Unlike the ideal Panopticon that
can be understood and monitored by its transparency within a social context,
Lee sees the Panopticon technology of satellites by-passing democratic control
and the perceived neutral regulation of the ITU as being instrumental in
closing off access to the viewpoint from Space:
"Through its rules of membership and procedure,
cooption of peripheral ˇlites, and reassertion of consensus in the face of
counter-hegemony, the ITU has contributed to the maintenance and reproduction
of hegemony. This supports the argument put forward by Cox (1992a:32)* that, in
the late twentieth century, democracy has come to be quietly redefined in the
centres of world capitalism. He argues that , through 'limited democracy', key
aspects of economic management have become shielded from 'politics' (i.e.
popular pressures)."[16]
The
distance from earth has enabled states to develop their large-scale high
technology infrastructures beyond the view of the public they represent. Johan
Lembke comments on this distancing from public perception in relation to the
European satellite navigation system Galileo:
"This industrial program represents one of the major
public private undertakings in Europe, but how many people had heard about it
by April 2001? In fact, the debate on the new economy in Europe is strikingly
apolitical."[17]
The
European decision to build their own navigation system, 'Galileo' which is
almost identical to the US owned Global Positioning System (GPS) is evidence of
the paranoia surrounding this technology, the power struggles and suspicion.
America made GPS publicly available, however there were problems with this for
many nations:
"A rationale behind the push for an internationally
controlled satellite-based system navigation system was that it would be a
disadvantage to rely solely on one system like GPS, which was controlled by one
country, particularly its military branches."[18]
More than
this though the US only made part of their system available. The most accurate
part was kept for their own military operations. This meant that Europe was
being held back, particularly in pursuing technology that could be used for air
traffic control, which had to be highly accurate. Furthermore:
"The EC pointed out that although the US military
satellite network GPS had been available for civil use, 'this arrangement is
voluntary and can be halted at any time'(EC 1993b, p.19)"[19]
So far from
the co-operation agreed on in the Outer Space Treaty, Space-based technology is
being used to advantage the states that own it and is viewed with suspicion by
those that do not. There is 'persistent technological advantage for the
satellite owners'.[20] If you are developing the technology,
other nations will have to pay you for your knowledge and likely too for you
fabricating, launching, imaging, repairing expertise. Kelley Lee demonstrates
this through the example of the commercial company Intelsat. The company
claimed to be open to all countries that were part of the ITU but was
controlled by a board of governors on which the United States held sixty-one
percent of the voting rights. Subsequently American companies received the
biggest share of contracts.[21]
The
deployment and regulation of satellites favour an undemocratic control of the
technology. Unlike the Internet that also has its roots in the military,
satellites have been hampered by the cost of launches, the fragility of the
technology, the blatant expression of power and control etched into their
architecture and by their invisibility.
It is an
arrangement that has disadvantages. The release of the World Wide Web meant
unprecedented innovation as millions of people interpreted the technology for
their own circumstances, to make money and make connections. Satellite
technology for psychological, political and economic reasons has inhibited a
social participation. The European Space Agency makes a strong call for
participation through its 'Data Users Programme' that alludes to how counter
productive the historical protection of this technology has been:
"The Data User Programme
places the top priority on the user. The major challenge resides in the fact
that many end-users are un-aware, un-informed or un-convinced of the benefits
the Earth Observation systems can bring to their daily activities. The Data
User Programme has therefore fostered activities that bring together actors
from the Earth Observation Communities and actors from the User Communities, in
projects that define and evaluate innovative EO-based information services that
fully respond to the user needs."[22]
The
question is whether these restrictions are inherent or whether a better
connection can be made between individuals, Space and the world view.
Chapter Two
Making a Connection
Satellites
can be observed at night, but they can also be observed through the abstract
space of the Internet. This chapter looks at the opposing dynamic of growing
access to the satellite's world view and the mechanisms of its technology which
are available through the Internet. The existence of archived information,
tracking sites and real-time satellite images on the Internet may be the social
mechanisms by which we can monitor and diffuse this architecture of absolute
power.
Images
War images
sent via satellite and watched on television, can cease to have a profound
effect as the sense of dislocation from the event takes on an unbearably numb
quality. But there are moments when the satellite has given us insights and
altered our sense of ourselves. This image of earthrise on the moon did humble
people for a while.
The image
of an isolated planet literally put into perspective the self-destructive
conflicts on earth and brought a renewed sense that the world should unite, of
a Gaia philosophy of one world.
The
'world-view ' has become a popular image on the Net. Many instances give a real
time view in which you can input your current location and watch what the earth
looks like. It is compelling to watch how quickly the shadow moves at this
distance. Like watching the solar eclipse. For a moment it gives you a sense of
being on a spinning planet and the magnitudes of distance and speed. It is the
photographic quality of the image that does this because actually these
'videos' are a construct of algorithms and cleverly arranged graphics
simulating, according to the time zone, what is actually happening. One of the
Web Sites tells you how to set up the algorithms to make your own[23].
Jody
Berland, in her analysis of the politics surrounding Canadian satellite weather
images, asks the question, "What does it mean that we now view the skies
looking down, rather than up? What do we read in these images, and why do they
seem so dangerously eloquent?"[24]
Like their equivalent earth-based Web Cams, real time images from satellites
are multiplying on the Net.
Satellite images develop the spectacle of looking down that Nadar
discovered held such fascination when he flew in a balloon over Paris taking
aerial photographs in the mid nineteenth century. It fascinates us to look from
above, perhaps as Jody Berland suggests, because it feels like mapping, and
mapping makes us feel we have control of a landscape.
The
University of Wisconsin
Environmental Remote Sensing Centre presents a huge number of images
updating every minute showing population densities, iceberg movements, weather
systems. Many of them are stunning and they give superb resolution on screen
closing in to 250 metre views.
This image
of Hurricane Isobel fills the screen and when you choose a closer view you have
to scroll to see it all. It feels like you are panning directly overhead, it is
the view you have from a transatlantic plane where you can see the shadows of
the clouds, but here you have control over where you want to look and how long
you stay looking. There is something miraculous about the clarity of the image.
It is tantalising to think that in the future the view could become continuous
in space and time, that the pan across the earth could potentially be seamless
with the images, instead of updating each minute, keeping pace with real time.
Instead of looking at maps or the globe we could begin to consult a real-time
video of the world, which lets us see it as a dynamic system, not a static map.
The data
could be transformed in a number of ways. The convention of the photograph
makes you feel you are viewing with your eye. Jody Berland comments on the
mediation of the virtual 'lens'.
"Of
course the world changes not only from one moment to another, one view to
another, but also from one lens to another. All the more reason to call these
images from space photographs. They are in fact computer-generated or digital
simulations of photographs, or to be more precise, virtual images digitally
processed to look like photographs."[25]
While they
fascinate at this distance, there is a point at which the image from above
becomes disturbing. The person knocking on your door trying to sell you an
aerial picture of your house is most often unwelcome. Invasion of privacy is
etched into the view from above. But not in these images, they hover at a
discrete distance. This data collection is for environmental monitoring. Satellites can monitor levels of
pollution, they can track exactly where forests are being cut down, the extent
or imminence of floods, they are used to help cope with disasters such as
forest fires. It is the type of information John Gage refers to in the Global
Information Technology Report that becomes powerful when individuals have
access to it:
"Seeing from a distance becomes more powerful when
joined with local data, data flowing up from the most decentralised sources,
data never available before the arrival of ubiquitous access to the network.
What may not be known or reported at a national level can be known and reported
at a local level. Seeing the images of clear-cut logging in the centre of the
National Forest Preserve of Gabon takes on new meaning when local data is added
that shows the names and companies of those doing the logging."[26]
Conversely,
the satellite image has the power to reduce information. Like the television
images of war, the overhead view distances and distorts the experience of
events on the ground. The satellite image of the Shuttle exploding reduces the
emotional impact that event had on people's lives. Responding to the satellite
image of Mount St Helens erupting, a man who witnessed the event felt it
undermined his experience:
"The land mass looks so clean and
antiseptic," he said. "Here is this little blob. It looks so sterile
compared to the experience we went through. But at ground zero, it was pretty
intense. It really makes you feel pretty insignificant. Yet, you know the
magnitude and the fury of the eruption."[27]
Tracking
The
tracking of satellites during the Cold War by the likes of Kettering Boys
School has been superseded by real time Web-based tracking. 'J-Pass Tracking' on the NASA Web
site[28]is
an image of the globe surrounded by dots representing, it says about five
hundred satellites. When you click on a dot the orbit of the satellite appears
with its name and you can bring up information about the satellite including
its current co-ordinates: longitude, latitude and altitude. It purports to give
real time information. Every minute the co-ordinates change. It is interesting,
to see their paths and names, which countries they pass over. The information
means that you can work out which satellites might be visible in your area.
NASA will also send you an email about every few weeks saying when the Space
Station will be in view.
There is a
fascination in watching the numbers change. They move quickly, some of the
orbits are ninety minutes. Unfortunately J-pass only shows one orbit at a time.
If they were all sketched in, the image would probably be too shocking, and the
site only shows five hundred of the nine thousand or so objects that apparently
exist. One page allows for a comparative analysis and here the numbers begin to
create a picture of events unfolding. When the Shuttle makes a journey to the
Space Station you can watch the co-ordinates side-by-side. The data of digits
turns into an image in your head, a video even, of the Shuttle moving closer to
and docking with the Space Station. Apart from the Shuttle and Mir, when it was
there, the orbits seem to be predictable. They follow roughly the same path[29],
taking the same amount of time, so the concept of whether this is real time
tracking is maybe questionable, they are like the earth's shadow fairly
predictable in their courses. If you
want to sense some kind of connection with bodies in outer space, you have to
trust in information that is difficult to verify.
The
information presented on the site is helpful, it is educational, most of the
NASA Web site has the air of a school project about it, but like any PR
exercise it creates an illusion. However many dots I have clicked, I have never
found one that did anything other than transmit TV or telecommunications, or
photograph weather or other environmental patterns. The core use of satellite
technology, the military applications, are notably missing. The images become
diversions as Jody Berland says of the Canadian satellite programme:
" Popular reliance on weather forecast has helped to
legitimate huge expenditures on space and computer technologies with a mainly
military genesis and purpose. The scope and expense of satellite observation
far surpasses its demonstrated usefulness to transforming weather
prediction...Continuous, satellite-based, weather forecasts accomplish something
else: they create a consumer market for satellite surveillance services that
otherwise would have to be funded entirely by government and military
agencies."[30]
Satellite
tracking has its roots in the Cold War. J-Pass Tracking is presented as a
hobbyist's diversion, although the name may allude to the history of satellite
tracking being in the joint-passing, peace movement tecchies, trying to keep
tabs on their government's questionable activities. NASA presents itself on the
Web glossing over, not only the history of the military use of Space. It opens
up its activities to hobbyists because it needs to fuel interest in Space and
it needs to capture particularly the interest of children. This is what
happened very effectively to the generation born around the time of the moon
landings. The site operates like a magazine, choosing the information that can
be available and treating the bizarre phenomenon of orbiting surveillance
hardware like a game, 'dumbing down' both the strangeness of Space and the
straight forward need to know what is up there.
Archives
The Spacewarn
Bulletin is an online monthly news bulletin from the National Space Science
Data Center/ World Data Center for Satellite Information based at the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Its main purpose is to list the
launches and decays of satellites each month.[31]
In July
2003 the Bulletin records that the States launched three satellites, Rainbow 1,
for television broadcasting, the Mars Explorer Rover-B or Opportunity which is
on a 'planetary mission' and Quakesat, a small 'nanosatellite' for
photo-imaging that has earthquake detection equipment onboard. Seven or eight
satellites seem to have been launched at the same time from Plesetsk in Russia.
Two tiny Japanese satellites one called Cute-1, two Canadian satellites , two
Danish, a Czech minisatellite and a Russian satellite. The text gives the place
and time of the launch, the initial orbital parameters that is the position of
the orbit. For some it gives the weight. For example the US Rainbow 1 satellite
is 4.3 tonnes, while Cute-1 weighs 1 kilogram. Most have some kind of
description too:
"Mimosa is a Czech minisatellite that was launched by a Rokot
rocket from Plesetsk at 14.15 UT on 30 June 2003. The 66kg satellite is nearly
spherical with 28 sides and carries a microaccelerometer to monitor the
atmospheric density profile by sensing the atmospheric drag. Initial orbital
parameters were period 96.3 min, apogee 844 km, perigee 316 km, and inclination
96.8¼."[32]
The SIPRI
report of 1978 (Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute) references a UN Convention for the monitoring of all space launches. Up
till then the recording had been voluntary:
"Such a register had been in existence since early 1960
and the data have been recorded on a voluntary basis, but the convention
formalizes it on a mandatory basis."[33]
The
Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space makes it
mandatory for any state launching an object to register it in that state and
that also the UN Secretary-General will keep a central register with the
following information:
"(a) the launching state or states; (b) an appropriate
designation of the space object or its registration number; (c) the date and
territory or location of the launch; (d) basic orbital parameters, including
nodal period, inclination, and apogee and perigee heights; and (e) general
function of the space object."[34]
Information
in the Spacewarn Bulletin is notably patchy, however. It may be that
data has been lodged in the appropriate places, but here for instance Rainbow
1, an American satellite which "will provide direct-to-home television
services in the contiguous United Sates through its several transponders."
provides no details on its orbit, "Parking longitude is not available".[35]
It is easy to see how information can be withheld. Rainbow 1 is given no
ownership and the description is short enough to be misleading. It is possible
to name one benign function such as earthquake detection without naming other
more questionable ones.
Links are
given to more comprehensive information, but this has to be logged in to,
"The login requirement is enforced due to the events on 11 September
2001". All the time information about and from satellites on the Web feels
constrained by opposing dynamics, as America, with its 'homeland security'
policy, wrestles with its ambiguous stance on freedom of information. Whatever
information is given out here, it is under the 'nasa.gov' url. As Jody Berland
writes of the satellite images of North America, not only do our images of the
sky come now from the heavens, they come from NASA.[36]
The Internet offers a way to observe satellite activity, but like my filming of
the police helicopter, your looking may also be being monitored.
Our ability
to link to a place in Space is dependent on the outcome of these opposing
dynamics, but the filtering of this viewpoint seems unsustainable, as Ann
Florini, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
in Washington D.C. comments:
"It sends a very bad signal to the rest of the world.
It says that we don't really mean what we say about freedom of information,
transparency and openness. Foreign policy ought to be a matter of public
discussion and public debate. There is no reason for any kind of information to
be channelled only to the government, especially when it's freely available to
the rest of the world. The U.S. is not the only operator of high-resolution
satellites, and that's going to increasingly be the case."[37]
Despite the
restrictions there is a growing access to satellite imagery and a cult for
observation enabled by the Net. But much should or can the connection be pushed
and what is the experience to be gained?
Conclusion
Distance and Experience
This idea
of experiencing placelessness and freedom in space has always been a fallacy.
The astronauts confined to their ship, their space suits and even their
language under national control. Armstrong's reaction to stepping onto the moon
were prearranged on Earth. There was no outlet, partly because of the
conventions of television, for giving expression to what it was like, which is
why the banality of the countdown and technical communications became strangely
fascinating, because they were the most spontaneous and natural speech. Of
Gargarin's experience Blanchot writes:
"The condition of the cosmonaut is, in some respects,
pitiful: a man who is the bearer of the very sense of liberty and who has never
found himself a greater prisoner of his own position, free of the force of
gravity and weighted down more than any other being, on the way to maturity and
all bundled up in his scientific swaddling clothes, like a new-born child of
former times, reduced to nourishing himself with a feeding bottle and to wailing
more then talking."[38]
Distance
and closeness form an inherent dichotomy within communication and information
technology. The telephone lets us speak to people far away, but the fact that
you need the technology to communicate reinforces the distance. The ease of
access to images from Space dulls the otherworldliness of the viewpoint.
Kevin
Robins likens the risk-free experience of telecommunications to the experience
of someone watching a shipwreck from the shore. He refers to a study by Hans
Blumenberg[39] and his
description of the difference between the mariner in peril and the spectator
witnessing the disaster, "By virtue of his capacity for distance, [the
spectator] stands unimperiled on the solid ground of the shore. He survives
through one of his useless qualities: the ability to be a spectator"[40]
Robins applies this metaphor to unspecified new technologies, suggesting a more
dynamic role for the spectator:
"The new technologies allow us to explore - in the
domain of vision, at least - the world of the unknown. But they make it
possible to do this from a perspective of distance and detachment, from the
perspective of the spectator. They screen for us the realities of the world,
but they do so under conditions that screen us from its reality. There is a compromise
formation: we can be mariners and spectators at the same time."[41]
With the
satellites, the real time images and tracking, we are not astronauts, we are
spectators at a distance, but there is the beginning of a compromise, a
connection.
Paul Virilio
goes further and sees the growing connection to remote sensing technology as
dangerous. Our constant,
un-thought-through craving for new things is a step closer to what is
ominously termed 'the general accident'. He predicts the opposite of John Gage,
that telecommunications which dissolve distances will have the effect of taking
us further from our locality in a process of giving up on the physical world
and on physical movement, the connection is a reductive process:
"Some time ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupˇry wrote, 'the
aeroplane has taught us the straight line'. Telematics will in future teach
us the point, the inertia of the dead centre."[42]
There is an
insinuation in his reasoning that the view from above is more than the preserve
of the privileged, it is the preserve of the gods and that people should be
concerned with earth. This new connection we are making with Space profoundly
alters the assured perspective of the Renaissance that placed a vanishing point
on the horizon, instead the vanishing point should be perceived as the centre
of the earth:
"The original reference point for sight is therefore
not what the Italian masters said it was, that of vanishing lines converging on
the horizon, but one bound up with the delicate balancing act of a universal
attraction which imposes on us its gearing towards the centre of the Earth, at
the risk of our falling. As Victor Hugo put it: The rope doesn't hang, the
Earth pulls."[43]
It is more
than likely that connections to real-time satellite images over the Internet
will continue to improve. A trend of greater access is beginning also in the
field, as smaller satellites are put into orbit in a bid to create business
opportunities[44]. Satellites
have to some degree been a redundant technology since the end of the Cold War,
searching for new uses, but there may be a paradigm shift about to happen in
which we potentially all become owners of tiny satellites that gaze at the
places we want them to, at the Earth, or out into Space. This technology for
smaller satellites, such as the 1kg Japanese satellite, Cute 1, is being
developed now and it is set in this direction.
"In Surrey, Martin Sweeting is working on
his most radical proposal yet - credit card-sized satellites.
"The intent is to be able to manufacture these
at very low cost, to launch them at relatively low cost and then operate them,
more of an organic cloud in orbit which can be very rapidly reconfigured,"
he said."[45]
From the
origins of satellites in espionage and ballistics, to the politically sound proliferation
of environmental satellites, it may be that entertainment and a kind of virtual
tourism will define a future democratic participation in remote viewing. With
our own digital cameras in Space we would become both 'mariners and
spectators', able to connect to the biggest bungee jump on offer.
"Reverse vertigo that may well force us to change the
way we think about the landscape and about the human environment."[46]
BOOKS
Michel
Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison, Penguin, London 1977.
Stephan Le
Goueff (ed), Satellite Regulation in Europe: Legal texts and materials, Kluwer Law International, The
Hague 2001
Dr
Bhupendra M. Jasani ,Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Outer
Space - Battlefield of the Future?, Taylor and Francis Ltd., London 1978.
Kelley Lee,
Global Telecommunications Regulation: A political economy perspective, Pinter, London 1996.
Johan
Lembke, Competition for Technological Leadership: EU Policy for High
Technology, Edward
Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham UK 2002.
Nicolas
Mateesco Matte, Aerospace Law: Telecommunications Satellites, Butterworth and Co. (Publishing)
Ltd., London 1982.
Timothy
Pratt, Charles Bostian, Jeremy Allnutt, Satellite Communications, John Wiley and Sons , Hoboken, USA
2003
Delbert D.
Smith, Communication via Satellite: A Vision in Retrospect, A.W.Sijthoff, Leyden 1976.
Paul
Virilio, Open Sky,
Verso, London 2000.
ARTICLES
IN BOOKS:
Jody
Berland ,' Mapping Space: Imaging Technologies and the Planetary Body' in
Stanley Aronowitz et al (ed), Technoscience and Cyberculture, Routledge London1996
Maurice
Blanchot, 'The Conquest of Space' in Michael Holland (ed), The Blanchot Reader,
Blackwell, Oxford 1995.
K. Maeda,
'Small satellites in the Future Space Infrastructure' in M. Rycroft N. Crosby
(ed), Smaller Satellites: Bigger Business: Concepts, applications and
markets for Micro/Nanosatellites in a new Information Age, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
Dordrecht, The Netherlands
WEBSITES:
NASA J-Pass
Generator
< http://science.nasa.gov/RealTime/JPass/PassGenerator/>
European
Space Agency, Data User Programme
<http://dup.esrin.esa.it/informations/UserView.asp>
Federation
of American Scientists, Intelligence Resource Program
<http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/>
Treaty on
Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of
Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies <
http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/ost/text/space1.htm
>
International
Telecommunication Union
<http://www.itu.int/home/index.html>
Okinawa
Charter on Global Information Society
http://www.dotforce.org/reports/it1.html
Fourmilab
<
http://www.fourmilab.ch/>
University
of Wisconsin Environmental Remote
Sensing Centre
<
http://www.ersc.wisc.edu/resources/EOSC.html >
2nd Update
on the Implementation of the
DOT Force
Genoa Plan of Action
<http://www.dotforce.org/reports/Summary_ConfCall_Feb_2002.html>
ARTICLES
ON WEBSITES:
Tim Bowler,
'The UK's mini-satellite revolution', Friday, 15 November, 2002,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2465013.stm>
John Fauber, 'Satellites redefining