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Tracking Satellites That Aren't There
stacybro writes "Wired is running an interesting article about amateur astronomers tracking "black" satellites." From the article: "The observers, who congregate on a Web site called Heavens-Above and a mailing list called SeeSat-L, have amassed an impressive collection of information and expertise. For two decades, they have played a high tech game of hide-and-seek with the US's National Reconnaissance Office, a secretive satellite agency. By coordinating their efforts, amateur observers in Europe, North America, and South Africa monitor satellites at different phases of their journeys and extrapolate the precise dimensions of their orbits." This is in addition to the ones we know about and even the ones we think we know about.
"Nothing to see here, please move along".
Never has it been so relevant.
For the record, Heavens-Above.com isn't just devoted to tracking spy sats, although I would have gotten that impression from the blurb. The site tracks all kinds of satellites -- including ISS, the shuttle (if it were up), and the Iridium constellation. It's not just for people with a specific interest in spy sats and it is in fact very handy if you want to see what you might be able to see on a given night before going out to observe. (Showing friends or students the shuttles, the space station, or Iridium flares is pretty neat, so I always take a look before observing.)
You don't appear to have read the article.
Knowing where spy satellites are is vital if you're trying to hide something. Since even the US doesn't have and can't afford a globe covering spy satellite system a la Iridium, the eye in the sky can't be watching you every minute of the day. Thus if you know the orbits of the spy satellites you can time things to keep your unpleasant business a secret. Even if you don't know where *all* of the satellites are, knowing where some of them are is better than nothing.
Consider the situation where you want to move a pile of refined weapon-grade plutonium out of your nuclear power station reactor. It's not something you're supposed to be doing, since that reactor is ostensibly for power generation, not for armament production. You don't exactly want to do this when people are watching because it's rather obvious when you park a big shielded truck outside your reactor and load the plutonium onto it. So you want to pick a time that the bird's eye won't be watching, or at least when it won't get a good view of what's going on. This will keep you from having to answer to the IAEA or the UN or any other nuclear busybodies. This worked pretty well for India.