The Shadow Space Race

vm writes "NOVA's recent documentary, "Astrospies," was written and co-produced by journalist and NSA expert, James Bamford. It details the U.S. Air Force's orbiting spy station program begun in the 1960s, the Manned Orbital Laboratory. Designed from a heavily modified Gemini 2 capsule and launched from a Titan III booster rocket, MOL was basically intended to be a Hubble telescope pointed at Earth with the sole intention of collecting photo intelligence on the Soviets using an impressive array of optics and gyro balanced cameras operated onboard by specially trained astronauts. The lab was never launched, however, due to the competing Corona unmanned spy satellite program funded by NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office. Partly spurred by the success of the Apollo missions, the Soviets, meanwhile, sent cosmonauts to its own succesfully launched spy platform, the Almaz. In addition to an onboard film lab and a space-to-ground image relay system, it included an alarming first in manned space exploration; a 23mm aircraft cannon — which is rather ironic in light of Russia and China's recent attempts to ban space weaponry. At a time when we're still unearthing details about the post 9/11 domestic spying debacle, it's a fascinating look at the history of technology used to look over our neighbors' fences." There is more to the story but what these sorts of stories always make me wonder, is since this was the 60s, what are they doing NOW!

Comments

I know this is cheating, but

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I actually watched the show (Nova). Between the time that Francis Gary Powers got shot down and the advent of DIGITAL technology, there was a time window where all kinds of crazy stuff was tried, like satellites shooting film and parachuting the canisters back to earth, to be snatched from the sky by military planes. But without a preview available, lots of very very expensive pictures of cloud tops got taken instead. The MOL and Almaz were both efforts to put intelligent eyes behind the shutter button. But by the time they got built, technology had marched on. Almaz actually was radioing video images of the on-board developed film back to earth within hours of the pictures being taken. But by then, MOL had been canceled in favor of the NRO's satellite program.

Re:Why Build new ones? Unless you want the Bigger.

[drinkypoo]

If they have good enough optics they could listen to enemies from space. All they would need was for the enemy to be in a room with a window. They could measure the vibrations of the window and turn the measurements into a reproduction of the sounds inside the room.

I don't think they in fact can do that. I think the length of an exposure and the necessary digital post-processing would pretty much knock it out. As far as I know we can't do that reliably with a terrestrial video camera today, because you need a long-range reflection to get adequate travel out of the signal. You need to use a laser.

Physics says no

[iamlucky13]

The Soviet Almuz space spy stations, which were disguised as the Salyut research stations the USSR was also launching at the time, had a much smaller primary objective than the Hubble. There is no way they could have matched the Hubble's angular resolution. That's just journalists looking for some handy example of another telescope in space.

Resolution is limited by distance from the object, objective or mirror size, and wavelength. At visible wavelengths, for a satellite in a 500 km orbit with a 2.4 m diameter primary mirror like the Hubble, the best resolution possible is about 6 inches. Diffraction prevents you from doing any better (consider the famous single-slit experiment for a simple example). This optical limit has been established and understood for over a century, and the same physics apply for NASA, the Russians, the Air Force, and even consumer digital cameras.

Because of this, even though the Air Force is extremely protective of all details about their spy satellites, even about what orbit they're in (although some nerdy spotters have done a good job of tracking them), we still can get a pretty good idea of their capabilities. Both the Hubble and the Keyhole spy satellites were built by Lockheed and transported from assembly to launch facilities in similar containers. That constrains their size to be pretty close to that of the Hubble. In fact, there's some decent speculation that the basic geometry of the Hubble was copied from the Keyholes, meaning they would also have 2.4 m diameter mirrors.

So we know they can't count fleas on your dog, since they can only distinguish between objects 6 inches apart. This isn't the same as actually identifying objects 6 inches across (no, they can't read license plates). Supposedly it's good enough to distinguish between men and women based on proportion (is that Pamela Anderson?). It might be possible to do very slightly better using computers to compare multiple images of the same target, but the practicallity would be limited.

They also can't look through your roof. Visible light doesn't go through roofs. I believe some far infrared does, but because of the longer wavelength, the resolution is probably somewhere on the order of the size of the house itself, and the signal would no doubt be lost amidst the heat of the house.

The 6" resolution is also only under ideal conditions. That means calm, clear skies (incidentally, the Soviets liked to build smokey factories next to their submarine and strategic bomber bases...go figure) and filming straight down. Because changing the orbit to go directly over a target means burning precious fuel, a lot of shots are made obliquely, increasing the effective distance to the target.

Incidentally, most of the imagery from the 60's and early 70's was declassified in 2002. This confirmed that the early satellites had a resolution of about 20 feet (enough to spot airplanes, perhaps identify ships) and later versions of Corona could resolve at about 7 feet (spot the movements of military units, mobile nuclear missile launchers, identify planes). The first satellites with 6 inch resolution or close to that probably launched in the late 70's with improvements since mainly in guidance, manueverability, and low light sensitivity rather than resolution. Being already able to resolve people, it's not cost effective to go bigger from space on those rare occassions that you need to, when typically you can send in a Predator drone or a special forces team for a fraction of the price.

By the way, the Federation of American Scientists has an online primer on reconnaissance imagery. It's pretty interesting and shows samples of photos at differing resolutions. It really illustrates just how good 6" is from a strategic analysis viewpoint. At that scale, a good analyst can even tell what kind of missiles are hanging from a parked fighter jet (The plane in the sample pictures is MiG-25. The missiles are probably AA-6 Acrids).