DARPA tracking viewing habits of amateur astronomers

I came across this News Article today.

At first i thought it sounded great, but the part that stuck out to me was this quote:

SpaceView officials are actively seeking information from individual amateur astronomers about their equipment, sites and observing habits to help keep a trained eye on this untidy state of affairs. (space debris)

While that seemed to raise a few flags in my mind, i gave it the benefit of the doubt at first.

I went to their site to see more about the program.
Space Views Website

SpaceView seeks to provide the amateur astronomer with the opportunity to make a difference in the task of protecting our nation’s space assets. We are actively seeking information from individual astronomers about their equipment, sites, and observing habits. We are also exploring a mutually beneficial partnership that can last for the long term. This could potentially include time-sharing on telescopes, upgraded hardware at the astronomer’s site, or financial compensation.

When you go to register you are asked:

Name (first and last), Address, phone number, what kind of observing equipment you have, where you observe from, details about your telescope, details about your camera(s) and mounts, if you are on/off the grid while there, ect.

This program advertises that it would consider paying for you to "upgrade" your site and equipment to allow it to become automated and then shared with DARPA for them to use. In their promotional video they clearly say in big shocking letters how EXPENSIVE it would be for them to upgrade their own equipment, so instead they would pay to upgrade the public's instead?

Part of me thinks this is probably just a really awesome way to involve the help of the Amateur Astronomy Community in something important (tracking space debris), and there are a lot of smart guys out there who do this stuff in their spare time anyway. Im sure they could be a vital and beneficial asset to this program.

The Tin Foil hat side of me wonders if tracking viewing habits and locations could give them a map of areas to avoid with their experimental aircraft, and having the most sophisticated equipment in the amateur community plugged into their network with automated controls in the hands of DARPA just lets them point their (publics) equipment someplace else when they are going to be flying through the neighborhood.


Anyways, thought it was interesting enough to share.

By the way. If they were looking for a place to fly anything "secret" or "experimental" and wanted a good place to do this without too many prying eyes, couldn't they just do that over the ocean?

I'm sure it's not too far fetched for them to launch super secret things off an Air Craft Carrier type vessel, and using radar know if there are other boats nearby.

Just a thought. One would think if UFO's are mainly government operated, that they would do most of their stuff in the middle of the night over the middle of the ocean. Not a high chance of some average joe filming a softball game being out there

reply to post by tpsreporter


And just maybe when the alien ships come through, after contact with the US Government, they can again say they have an urgent need to control the equipment and point it in the wrong direction.

This is what my better half thinks and who am I to argue? She may have a point.

By the way flying things over the ocean may not accomplish what they need if it has to go sub-orbital or orbital. Even sub-orbital would cover most oceans.

The system does sound very odd. With that I have to agree. It is also possible,however, that linking to so many telescopes may give them a window on an imminent collision when their own site or sites may be clouded over. An array of scopes would give them a better chance, but would it be worth them paying for that cover? I don't know. unless of course the debris was on course fro one of their very expensive spy satellites and maybe was not even debris by a Chinese killer satellite. But then again would they want 'outsiders' to know about that?

reply to post by tpsreporter
Interesting stuff

In astronomy, the sheer scale of of our own skies, let alone the cosmos itself, has led them to combine resources for decades. So we have 'wide-array' and 'very large array' where widely spaced observatories can cover wider fields of view.

In that light, it seems inevitable and cost-efficient to offer to recruit America's 1000s of amateur astronomers - very smart really.

One of our own on ATS - ngchunter - has regularly posted images he's taken of satellites and the ISS. I guess if I was an astronomer and had the opportunity to spend free money on better equipment *and* interact with the 'big boys,' it'd be very, very tempting.

Well should have my all sky camera working within 2 to 3 week
Hoping to see Meteor or UFO.
My next year project is a telescope 8 or 10 inch I hope.
Maybe i should look into it

Originally posted by Trillium
Well should have my all sky camera working within 2 to 3 week
Hoping to see Meteor or UFO.
My next year project is a telescope 8 or 10 inch I hope.
Maybe i should look into it

Honey, DON'T get your name on ANY government list...you'll live longer.

Originally posted by Thunderheart

Originally posted by Trillium
Well should have my all sky camera working within 2 to 3 week
Hoping to see Meteor or UFO.
My next year project is a telescope 8 or 10 inch I hope.
Maybe i should look into it

Honey, DON'T get your name on ANY government list...you'll live longer.

Well after being on here for two year
I think i have a better chance of finding something myself then wait to read about it here.
they already have all our name and address from being on here

I can see a strong motivation for this. My concern would be the fine print that might say something along the lines of "since the equipment you are using to make observations is provided by the US government, you agree to keep your mouth shut about anything you see that might have national security implications."

If I had a fixed location, then I'd gladly sign up. This would be really interesting to be involved in. I saw an article on this the other day on Aviation Week the other day and was bummed out because I don't have a fixed location house anymore.