
Declassified US Spy Satellites Reveal Rare Look at Secret Cold War Space Program - sasvari
http://www.space.com/12996-secret-spy-satellites-declassified-nro.html
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ericHosick
Some time ago, I was watching the discovery channel with my father. There was
a show about the declassification of a top-secret satellite. My dad says "Oh,
I guess I can talk with you about this now."

Turns out he had been working on top-secret satellites in Lockheed Martin in a
secure place called the skunk-projects (he had to work in a full on sealed
vault. Maybe it was called skunk-works. I don't quite remember the name).

Anyway, interesting and funny conversations followed.

~~~
Joakal
Does this mean he can open source the schematics? I can pass it on to the open
space projects.

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seabee
Where do you think he'd get the schematics from? I can't imagine they would
ever leave the secure vault - declassification doesn't mean releasing to the
public domain.

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adolph
Surely he has them on some thumb drive with other keepsakes in the attic or
something.

~~~
anamax
> Surely he has them on some thumb drive with other keepsakes in the attic or
> something.

Do you really think that that's how folks (who aren't ex-Clinton officials,
that is, Sandy Berger) handle classified materials? Hint - they don't take
them home as keepsakes. They'd go to jail for that, or less.

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shimonamit
Here's how they "downloaded" back then...

 _According to documents released by the NRO, each HEXAGON satellite mission
lasted about 124 days, with the satellite launching four film return capsules
that could send its photos back to Earth. An aircraft would catch the return
capsule in mid-air by snagging its parachute following the canister's re-
entry._

~~~
gvb
Writeup, with a picture:
[http://archives.starbulletin.com/2005/08/19/news/story13.htm...](http://archives.starbulletin.com/2005/08/19/news/story13.html)

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schrototo
_The satellites had a resolution of about 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to nearly 1 meter)_

And that was in the 70s, imagine what stuff they've got up there right now!

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pointyhat
I worked for a couple of nefarious organisations over the years.

I doubt there is nothing much greater in resolution. There are so many
technical challenges such as diffusion due to moisture in the atmosphere that
limit things practically. The resolution is basically shite from space.
Certain non-visible light bandwidth applications are better as they don't
suffer from the same effects however they have to then deal with cosmic
radiation (which is terrible apparently) and corresponding gaps in the
magnetosphere which screw up the equipment.

It's a bit hit and miss really and costs lots of money for no real good.

If they had anything significantly better, they'd have decommissioned all the
Lockheed U2's by now.

~~~
steve19
The optical equipment I work with has improved so much since the 70s that I
find it hard to believe spy sat technology has not.

I am not sure that the U2 is still used for surveillance. I think it is now
used for research purposes. The much more modern Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird has
been retired. Either the DoD is relying on sats or UAVs or the rumored next-
gen spy plane is deployed [0]

Even if sats can take hi-res photos, there are still plenty of good reasons to
use spy planes. Capturing visible light from space only works if the target
area is not covered in cloud, spy sats are very hard to hide (it can be done
in the short term but amateurs eventually find them) and they can be shot down
(in a war with China, you bet the spy sat will be knocked out within hours of
the first hostilities), spy planes can carry SIGINT gear as well.

That said, there are __plenty __of good reasons not to use spy planes and rely
solely on sat intel. If you plane crashes it is a diplomatic and technological
disaster. Unlike the stealth Blackhawk crash at Bin Laden's compound, spy
planes don't carry a squad of seals equipped with C4 to destroy the valuable
top secret technology.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_%28aircraft%29>

~~~
wisty
I think the limiting factor is the air, not the lens. That's why astronomers
put telescopes in space (to avoid the air completely), or use a huge array of
cameras and postprocess it.

I'd expect the big gains are in stitching together lots of signals, possibly
over time, and extracting interesting features automatically. I'd think
resolving stuff over time can only be done if you already know what you are
looking for (to avoid massive dimensionality problems), or for static
features. Still, that's an interesting subset.

~~~
count
Just like you can link a bunch of smaller telescopes on the ground to
compensate for air distortion and get a significantly higher resolution, it
should be possible to do the same with a bunch of satellites looking down.

~~~
a-priori
But then you have to deal with parallax from nearby objects on the ground.
That would limit its usefulness in hilly, mountainous or urban environments.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's something computers are really, really good at.

The cameras don't have to be too widely separated. A little time and space
helps a lot. The main problem is that this reduces your areal coverage as
you're dedicating multiple sensors to a single sensing target.

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mef
Link to 1978 HEXAGON overview, declassified Sep 17:
<http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/GAMHEX/HEXAGON/52.PDF>

