Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Space Spotters Track Secret Satellites

Posted by Zonk on from the better-than-sweeps-week dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "When government officials announced last month that a top-secret spy satellite would come falling out of the sky they said little about the satellite itself. They didn't need to. Spotters equipped with little more than a pair of binoculars, a stop watch and star charts, had already uncovered some of the deepest of the government's expensive secrets and shared them on the Internet. Thousands of people form the spotter community. Many look for historical relics of the early space age, working from publicly available orbital information. Still others are drawn to the secretive world of spy satellites, with about a dozen hobbyists doing most of the observing. When a new spy satellite is launched the hobbyists will collaborate on sightings around the world to determine its orbit, and even guess at its function. They often share their information on their web site, satobs.org."

6 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. What one seeks to hide, another can uncover by KublaiKhan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No real surprise that folks are spotting these things. It's a little hard to hide something orbiting the earth--it's not like one can really hide it behind a bush or under a rock. ...though it might be interesting to insert a spy satellite into an upper stage of a rocket that delivers an otherwise innocuous communications satellite, come to think of it...

    --
    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure dome decree
    1. Re:What one seeks to hide, another can uncover by KublaiKhan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Which is what would make a discarded upper stage ideal--because you would expect it to be in a lower orbit than the satellite that it pushed out. Blow off a couple side panels, stabilize the tumble into something useful, and you're in with flynn.

      --
      In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
      A stately pleasure dome decree
    2. Re:What one seeks to hide, another can uncover by KublaiKhan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      All orbits are regular--and one could always fake an accident with the thruster at the end "pushing it into an unexpected orbit"

      And not all the tumble would need to be removed--just set it into a tumble that would allow the cameras or other instruments on board to record properly, on an axis around the camera lens, say.

      Hell, I'm surprised they haven't done something like that already.

      --
      In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
      A stately pleasure dome decree
  2. Government for you. by iknownuttin · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Spokesmen for the National Reconnaissance Office have stated that they would prefer the hobbyists not publish their information, and suggest that foreign countries try to hide their activities when they know an eye in the sky will be passing overhead.

    And:"If Ted can track all these satellites," Mr. Pike said, "so can the Chinese."

    That's damn straight. WTF is it with Government when they say shit like this? What, they think the rest of the World is too stupid to do this? Or photos in the airports by security. I got news for the Government: there are folks out there that have great memories and can draw. Go through security, look around, and then draw what you saw when you sit down and no one will no any different.

    --
    I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
  3. real time tracking data on USA-193 by Bazzargh · · Score: 5, Informative

    The links in TFA aren't very good - theres a site
    here that does real time sat tracking (ooh, animated over google maps).

    I looked there last week and they didn't have enough data to show the orbit but it seems they have some elements now.

  4. Spy Satellites and Space Shuttle Crossrange by bitrex · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An interesting fact I learned listening to some of the MIT lectures available online about the history and development of the Shuttle: One of the military requirements of the Shuttle was that it had at least 1400 miles crossrange. This was so for example, in a time of crisis (the shuttle was designed during the Cold War after all), the Shuttle could be launched from Vandenberg AFB into a polar orbit, immediately drop a spy satellite into orbit on the first go around (to prevent an enemy from learning the projected orbital path of the spy satellite by tracking the shuttle through multiple orbits), and then come right back to land on the west coast. Of course the earth would have rotated eastwards during that 90 minute orbit, so the shuttle needed the crossrange to be able to also glide eastwards and make a landing. Some original designs showed the shuttle having straight wings; apparently one of the major reasons NASA went with a delta-wing configuration was to meet the crossrange requirement.