Unlisted Satellites Spotted By France

A French space-surveillance radar has detected 20-30 satellites in low Earth orbit that do not figure in the U.S. Defense Department's published catalogue, a discovery that French officials say they will use to pressure U.S. authorities to stop publishing the whereabouts of French reconnaissance and military communications satellites.

Data from the U.S. network of ground-based sensors is regularly published and used worldwide by those tracking satellite and space-debris trajectories. The published U.S. information excludes sensitive U.S. defense satellites, but regularly publishes data on the orbits of other nations' military hardware.

"We have discussed the Graves results with our American colleagues and highlighted the discrepancies between what we have found and what is published by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network," said one French defense official responsible for the Graves operation. "They told us, 'If we have not published it in our catalogue, then it does not exist.' So I guess we have been tracking objects that do not exist. I can tell you that some of these non-existent objects have solar arrays."


SOURCE:
Space.com

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand I believe that the existence and rough orbit of all satellites should
be open knowledge, but on the other hand I think the French are right to use this to
pressure the U.S. to stop publishing there countries military and surveillance
satellite info if it does not post its own as well.


Comments, Opinions?

[edit on 6/8/2007 by iori_komei]

I also read this article earlier today.. I was gonna post it here but you beat me to it!

Originally posted by iori_komei
I believe that the existence and rough orbit of all satellites should be open knowledge

I'll have to disagree with you here.. the US has some New Stealthy Satellites in orbit that cannot be tracked by anyone. Here are some interesting articles on them.

The United States is building a new generation of spy satellites designed to orbit undetected, in a highly classified program that has provoked opposition in closed congressional sessions where lawmakers have questioned its necessity and rapidly escalating price, according to U.S. officials.

Spy Satellite Article by washington post

These could very well be part of Bushes "European missile defense system".





[edit on 8-6-2007 by Clandestino]

[edit: code tags switched to ex tags - skewing page]

[edit on 9-6-2007 by 12m8keall2c]

20-30 seems like a bit of a ball park figure.

If you've spotted them, and are confident they arn't listed- you could count them, right?

Originally posted by Now_Then
20-30 seems like a bit of a ball park figure.

If you've spotted them, and are confident they arn't listed- you could count them, right?

Well there's the problem of not knowing if you're counting them more than once,
so there could be 24 of them, but because they don't know if they've accidentally counted
a few more than once, they say 20-30, at least that's what I figure.

Ok, so one of them is the space station out of Moonraker, one is the deathstar, one is deepspace 9. The US can tell them what they like, if they can't prove they are US satelites, they are not US satelites. (wink wink). Maybe they are indian, chinese, or russian!

Maybe decommisioned satalites whose orbits have degreaded a bit.

If no one claims them soon China might start shooting at em again!

France has found 20-30 "items" in low Earth orbit that appear to be satellites is without question. I don't think they can tell who made those satellites... or when and where they were lanched from (in every case) but it's a safe bet some are American. There may be other terrestrial national interests with similar capabilities, perhaps "black" corporate interests too and "others".

It would seem that the French intend to pressure the US to "fess-up" to theirs behind closed doors and keep the data secure.

OK. Hmmm, if that works they could use the same leverage against the other players, Russia, China, India (which has a successful recent yet robust low-earth orbit satallite delivery system) and then there's all the "unannounced" rogues, proxies, et al.

Yes, there's more in space that can be entirely accounted for publicly and deserves some scruntiny. Thanx, for posting this iori. I'll ask a couple of my friends at CSA and see if they have any "back channel" news. It is the first time I've heard of this sort of public-intrigue "there's stuff up there" since... Sputnik? I may be wrong.

Vic

[edit on 9-6-2007 by V Kaminski]

I'm shocked! Not!

This reminds me of an old post here on ATS.

The US Government 'announced' that their Missile Defense Initiative would proceed under cover of black-ops a couple of years ago (ATS: National Missile Defense Goes Black).

You can bet anything you like that when an announcement like that is made it means that it probably has been going on all along and they just can't hide it anymore, so there no sense in denying it.

I mean just what do people think a fleet of four space shuttles were carrying up into orbit on all those "classified payload" missions?
.

Mind you NORAD must have know about them - its their job to track satalites and space junk.

Everyone seems to be forgetting Japan. I mean they have tried to launch stuff to Mars already, even though they have failed at this, does not mean they arent capable of launching satelites into the orbit. They certainly have the means resources for it and Japan has in the past been very silent about any of their space related programs and anything that has to do with their military.

Just thought I would throw it in there.