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French Threat To ID Secret US Satellites

Posted by kdawson on from the i-spy-with-my-little-radar dept.

SkiifGeek brings to our attention a story that ran on space.com a few months back but didn't get much wider notice at the time. "The French have identified numerous objects in orbit that do not appear in the ephemeris data reported by the US Space Surveillance Network. Now, the US claims that if it doesn't appear in the ephemeris data, then it doesn't exist. The French insist that at least some of the objects they have found boast solar arrays. Therefore it seems that the French have found secret US satellites. While they don't plan to release the information publicly, they do intend to use it as leverage to get the US to suppress reporting of sensitive French satellites in their published ephemeris."

2 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. I don't think so by Quadraginta · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a number of useful things you can know about a satellite, just knowing it's orbit.

    * If it's geostationary, it's designed to look at or communicate with whatever is right underneath it. It's also unlikely to be a photorecon satellite, because your km-per-pixel sucks from 36,000 km away.

    * If it's in a polar orbit, it's probably designed to look at big swathes of the Earth as the latter rotates under it. Polar orbits are too expensive otherwise.

    * If it's in a low orbit with just enough inclination to get up to your latitude -- why, that sounds like it might be a photorecon satellite designed with you in mind...

    * In which case, if you know when it's over you, and when it's not, then you have a rough idea of when you're in the crosshairs. That can be handy.

    I don't necessarily disagree that the main way you keep your capabilities secret is to keep what the satellites do secret. But it probably helps, at least a little bit, to keep the existence and orbit of the thing secret, too.

  2. Re:let 'em by E++99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Amateur satellite trackers have been the bane of US secret satellite projects for quite a while, actually. You don't necessarily even need a telescope to do it, you just need to live somewhere without too much light pollution. (Which is probably why a lot of the notable amateurs tend to be from Canada or Australia.) Of course what the amateurs publish probably doesn't come close to the precise ephemeris data that the French are gathering, and likewise doesn't include radio frequencies.