Nowhere to Hide: DARPA 3-D Underground Mapping from Satellite

This is old news from 2008, but, surprisingly, there's very little found about it on the net.

DARPA Gives Go Ahead to Underground SatNav Mapping

Homeland Security Today

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) gave the ok to Failure Analysis to build the Defense Underground Mapping Satellite Tracking and Ranging (DUMSTR) system. The company proposed $100,000,000.00/year proposal to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in February, 2008. The project is a a low-earth-orbiting, satellite-based, underground mapping matrix that will use existing Air Force satellite technology from the Defense Mapping Satellite Program (DMSP) and the Global Positioning System (GPS). The technology will allow the mapping of underground civil and military facilities around the world and “provide geological science information for plate tectonics, underground volcano structure and growth of lava chambers promising to increase the likelihood of future earthquake prediction capability.”

Thus, we have the Defense Underground Mapping Satellite Tracking and Ranging (DUMSTR) system.
It was green lit back in 2008. I wonder where it is in developmental or deployment staging now.

Some further Information:

DUMSTR consists of a matrix of 100, 3-axis controlled satellites to provide 2-D and 3-D underground topology to a depth of over 5,000 ft. Failure Analysis is experienced with satellite constellations such as GLOBALSTAR, GPS, INTELSAT and DMSP. “As international military and civil facilities are being located deeper and deeper underground to improve their survivability, the U.S. military wanted a system to identify them”, said Dr. Len Losik, President of Failure Analysis. DUMSTR was developed from telemetry prognostic signal intelligence technology developed and used on Air Force GPS 28 satellite constellation of satellites. Telemetry prognostics stops satellite infant mortality failures in the first year of in-orbit satellite operations and launch failures.

Details tout resolution down to and over 5000 ft. That's around one mile depth underground!

If, then, anyone has an underground base that isn't well over one mile underground, this satellite system should be able to map it out in all its super secret glory.

Noting the civil engineering aspect listed, it might very well be feasible for laymen and conspiracy theorists to get their hands on some underground maps on submitting requests through the proper channels.

What this could mean for non-military interests, including Conspiracy Theory types:

1. Put the question of magical mythical secret Alien bases under Dulce, mystical ancient underground cities like Kinkaid's cave, NAZI secret bunkers under Antarctica, or even tunnels leading into Hollow Earth to rest once and for all.

2. Archaeology! Hunting for lost and buried Pyramids or temples and cities beneath the sands of Egypt? That spooky giant pyramid supposedly buried in Alaska? Looking for the foundation stones to the lost city of Atlantis? There's now no need to travel and muck about in the dirt until confirmation is had. Target your location and get it imaged.

3. Additionally, from a geological standpoint, Doom Porn enthusiasts could get updated 3-D underground maps of major fault lines, and even accurate models of magma chambers like the one below Yellowstone.

I've no information on what channels one would need go through to obtain maps. Nor is there any confirmation on the working status of this project. That, however, is something, perhaps, the ATS community might look into?

It could be interesting tech if it ever gets into public hands.

Look at what google earth has allowed people to discover and find, this would be the next step in that. If it ever gets out in the open that is.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Well putting the evil conspiracies to the side for the moment and just looking at the technology, it does kind of make me marvel at some of the abilities we have. Putting this to use in looking at other planets for possible archaeological evidence is itself a very fascinating prospect.

I rather doubt they are producing all this at what is probably an enormous cost, just to find out where old Joe down the road has his secret end of the world bunker built though.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Its a joke considering the bunkers the US government has down there, probably just checking no one is close to their secret survival holes for when they really screw up the planet

reply to post by Spookybelle


Oh certainly, if this is active, Russia, China, N. Korea, allies, enemies, and everywhere that has any kind of infrastructure underground has been mapped in the smallest detail as it applies to having strategic advantage in peeking at what everyone has, and thinks they're getting away with hiding.

There may even be some surprises hidden away beneath friendly governments that supposedly share everything.



I'm kind of excited about what this could mean for Archaeology.
Is there some secret chamber beneath the Sphinx?
What's hidden, lost and buried beneath desert sands?
Are there indeed other ancient underground cities like the one at Derinkuyu?
Untouched tombs, and other untouched, undiscovered secret voids in the earth where History is hidden away?

The possibilities are exciting.

I'm not going to call this one a hoax, but I will label it as a"flight of fancy" that got misreported.
The key to this is the line in the article that says...

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) gave the ok to Failure Analysis to build the Defense Underground Mapping Satellite Tracking and Ranging (DUMSTR) system.

I dont think that ever happened.

It doesnt take too long to see that Failure Analysis is not a company that has ever built satellites, let alone 100 of them at a cost of $100,000,000.00.
Because Failure Analysis only appears to have 1 employee.

Dr. Len Losik appears to be Failure Analysis. It appears that its a company name he uses, as a consultant about predicting failure of components, in various industries.

THIS HERE is the website of Future Analysis. Quite apart from being a not very professional website, it talks about him and him alone. His credentials, his education, his papers, his conferences, his books, his youtube videos.
If you check out the address of this place in google maps, its just a one or two room office.

So... is this the face of a company building 100 satellites with millions of dollars? I dont think so.

I suggest in fact that all of this story started with a fanciful bit of writing that Dr. Losik wrote back in 2008, the text of which you can see HERE.
Written as a postulative piece of "what if" speculation, this is written at exactly the time that satnews said the contract for building these satellites had been awarded to him.
I suggest instead that a reporter merely wrote that a contract HAD been awarded, when it in fact had not.
And thats why Dr. Losik is still stuck in that little one room office in the suburbs.

reply to post by alfa1


Star for digging that up regardless all the sad face I'm having.

One wonders, however, the feasibility of such a thing as proposed, and if feasible, even to a percentage the depth resolution cited, just 500 ft for instance, how .mil and .gov could resist pursuing such a project, if not through Failure Analysis, but in partnership with already establish partners with research, manufacture and assembly infrastructure like Lockheed, McDD, etc?

As proposed, such a system would use existing satellite technologies?
Does that mean off the shelf, or, repurposing already active and deployed in-flight hardware?

reply to post by alfa1


On top of which, to get this thing to work, you have to be able to maneuver 100 LEO satellites to within 10 feet of each other in a regular matrix. That's not easy.

I'm also not seeing a grant from DARPA to Losik, or FA, or for any underground mapping project that might come close. There are a lot of deep underground mapping projects so I may be missing it but I don't see it popping out.

He's still writing papers on this, though.

AliceBleachWhite

As proposed, such a system would use existing satellite technologies?
Does that mean off the shelf, or, repurposing already active and deployed in-flight hardware?

Nah, you'd need new. The thing, once you peel the mysterious shroud of "what is he proposing" off of it, is a matrix gradiometer. Basically, you fly a matrix of satellites in a regular formation in low earth orbit across what you want to map, and you carefully measure the distances between them as masscons perturb their flight paths. By using a rather hefty math transform on the data, you can produce an image.

HOWEVER. What you have to do to do this is astronomically difficult. You have to have a regular matrix of satellites. And they're all going to want to go their own ways. But you have to keep them on station to within a gnat's ass. And then you have to move them away to a different spacing and scan again. So you're going to be moving these things around all the friggin' time, from 500 feet separation between down to 10 feet. Constantly. And you have to reposition the whole flock over the next target.

I'd say it's one of those things that sounds ok on paper but is going to be amazingly hard to pull off in practice. And if anything goes wrong, you're going to have satellite bits flying in all directions in low earth orbit.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Spelunkers would love this!

There is another technology that lets you see if the earth has been 'Destrubed' Good for Archealogists.

reply to post by Bedlam


*sigh* Stars for you as well, despite, again, even more sad face.

I'm guessing the NOSS clusters aren't numerous enough to do this sort of thing either.


clicky for bigger!

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Well, there's other ways, but you have to tow them under a helo, like an ATAEM. And no, I didn't mean a-team.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


I for one would not be so quick with the sad faces
I think this is firmly in the black budget by now.. thus the reason nobody has heard anything for 5 years.
You better believe if DARPA says build it it has been built so I am weary of "nothing to see here" posts.

reply to post by howmuch4another


Well, being this IS a Conspiracy site, that's one angle to speculate on.
However, as folks above have cited, evidence on the ground isn't pointing to this as being a reality.

Additionally, like the LEO clusters of NOSS (pictured in my previous post), often confused for a triangle formation of UFOs, we'd expect to see similar sightings of clusters with even denser formations and greater population of pin points in the sky.

Further, if it's gone BLACK, then, earlier speculation on all the wonderful boons to Archaeology and Geosciences will have fallen off the table.

reply to post by howmuch4another


Agreed .Oil companies have had this tech for years now.And satellites are not how it's done.Why all this misdirection?

AliceBleachWhite
reply to post by howmuch4another

 

Well, being this IS a Conspiracy site, that's one angle to speculate on.
However, as folks above have cited, evidence on the ground isn't pointing to this as being a reality.

Additionally, like the LEO clusters of NOSS (pictured in my previous post), often confused for a triangle formation of UFOs, we'd expect to see similar sightings of clusters with even denser formations and greater population of pin points in the sky.

Further, if it's gone BLACK, then, earlier speculation on all the wonderful boons to Archaeology and Geosciences will have fallen off the table.

If it's indeed BLACK then there would be very little if any available "evidence on the ground". Just sayin'.
Good thread topic to revive

reply to post by howmuch4another


Well, it'd be nice were more people to weigh in with their opinions, and/or experience and expertise where possible.

I'd certainly love to see this as an 'available' technology for the Archaeology and Geosciences side of things, but, a bit people exercising their curiosity as it applies to Nazi bases under Antarctica and such could be fun too.

(Throwing some friendly stars around like I'm giving everyone for participating wouldn't hurt either?)

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


This is the type of technology that can be used to scan for ancient underground/sea technologies & traces... Its "shared" scan depth would make sense to keep the accuracy with that data withheld.

Interesting share OP think about the LUNAR interior...

NAMASTE*******

reply to post by Bedlam


Just a thought as a matter of logistics and telemetry; would this array necessarily need be on the order of magnitude of 100 sats in tandem?

Alternatively, could the same or similar results occur were several NOSS style clusters to make several flybys on intersecting orbits over target areas coordinated through ground based tracking telemetry and onboard positioning in conjunction with the other two or three sats in a cluster?

If (big IF), such were technically feasible, it'd be a far more economical approach, as well as presenting a smaller orbital hazard and less visible eye-in-the-sky cross section for detection.

Several overflights by several clusters over time making multiple passes?
Mebbe?

I'm thinking dot-matrix printer approach here, as opposed to full sensor, full resolution, single image one-shot-one-kill image acquisition DSLR style here. Build up a map of a target area over time across several passes?
We're talking static targets. They don't move, ever. They're not going anywhere. mil-tech GPS could sort that, perhaps?

Wouldn't need 100 satellites then. 4 clusters of 3 making several intersecting passes over time could then hash it out?

howmuch4another
If it's indeed BLACK then there would be very little if any available "evidence on the ground". Just sayin'.

Up in the sky.
As Alice said, if there were 100 new satellites up there, they'd be seen. There do exist hobbyist satellite watchers, with satellite watcher forums and websites.

Like earthquakes, comets, and radio transmissions, you just cant hide that stuff.