US to Launch Secret Spy Satellite

reply to post by Bedlam


If you're going to that's probably the best place for it. Would be pretty interesting if you did.

reply to post by Zaphod58


It might even factor into the topic at hand. Who can say?

reply to post by Bedlam


It wouldn't surprise me in the least. Not much does anymore.

JohnPhoenix
So Russia for example can track this satellite from the time it leaves the ground to the time it's snug in it's orbit. Whats to stop them from launching their own satellite only for the sole purpose to intercept and decode the US spy satellite transmissions? At least beam the data back for analysis.

if every country did this, we would have world peace because a stalemate would occur. Heck.. i really do hope Russia does this now, followed by China, North Korea and all others.

Since it's secret we don't know for sure of course.

But you know if you do online banking, the communication between you and your bank's server is encrypted when the communication passes between you and others, the people in the middle can't read it (except for possibly the NSA though it's not confirmed if they've broken that encryption technology, but if not they are probably working on it).

Since it's a secret program I'd expect the encryption to be even better than what's used for your online banking.

Bedlam
Q: How do NROs latest satellites work?

A: Well, I can't answer that

ATS's latest "Ask Me Anything" guest Bill Yenne has a slightly different approach:

Q: Welcome to ATS. How much classified stuff do you know that you can't talk about?

A: Thank you for welcoming me to ATS.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I generally say "How 'bout them Yellow Jackets?"

NASA's budget is pathetic compared to the military and black budgets.

They could launch one every day with the insane resources and if they needed more at any point they can just print some more, remember that 2.1tril that was unaccounted for?

NASA gets a tiny fraction to do what they do.

I really wonder what the capabilities of such new spy satellites are. I think there was a hint in the press conference about the donated spy satellites, something along the lines that there was even audio recording hardware onboard which had to be removed before NASA engineers could get their hands on it... Just imagine... having a nooky and the people over at the Pentagon listen to every single word

Dalbeck
I really wonder what the capabilities of such new spy satellites are. I think there was a hint in the press conference about the donated spy satellites, something along the lines that there was even audio recording hardware onboard which had to be removed before NASA engineers could get their hands on it... Just imagine... having a nooky and the people over at the Pentagon listen to every single word

No. Sound doesn't travel in space.

reply to post by Bedlam


Yeah I know that, not in space, buuut... the people talking on Earth and maybe they have radar tech to detect and record spoken wavelengths you know.

Dalbeck
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Yeah I know that, not in space, buuut... the people talking on Earth and maybe they have radar tech to detect and record spoken wavelengths you know.

Audio isn't radio at spoken wavelengths. Sound and radio waves are not related at all. Sound doesn't return radar reflections.

eta: Waffling here whether to discuss something. Probably ought not. Maybe on RATS. It goes with the RATS thing I was talking about upthread. Sort of.

Bedlam
Audio isn't radio at spoken wavelengths. Sound and radio waves are not related at all. Sound doesn't return radar reflections.

eta: Waffling here whether to discuss something. Probably ought not. Maybe on RATS. It goes with the RATS thing I was talking about upthread. Sort of.

Sound out in open air won't return radar, however sound hitting surfaces vibrates the surfaces and theoretically those vibrations might be detected with radar. I figured it was theoretically possible so searched and found this article discussing it:

www.schneier.com...

the new "through-the-wall audio surveillance system" uses a powerful beam of very high frequency radio waves instead of light. Radio can penetrate walls – if they didn't, portable radios wouldn't work inside a house.

The system uses a horn antenna to radiate a beam of microwave energy –between 30 and 100 gigahertz – through a building wall. If people are speaking inside the room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing, will be vibrating. This modulates the radio beam reflected from the surface.

Although the radio reflection that passes back through the wall is extremely faint, the kind of electronic extraction and signal cleaning tricks used by NASA to decode signals in space can be used to extract speech.

What bothers me about that explanation is the "clothing" surface being a suitable surface, as I wouldn't think clothing would work all that well. Something like a bass drumhead I would expect to work pretty well because it should vibrate with audio pretty well and being a large flat surface should be measurable, but those aren't too common. I'm not saying clothing is impossible but I'd have to see a demonstration to convince me regarding how well it actually works.

JohnPhoenix
So Russia for example can track this satellite from the time it leaves the ground to the time it's snug in it's orbit. Whats to stop them from launching their own satellite only for the sole purpose to intercept and decode the US spy satellite transmissions? At least beam the data back for analysis.

if every country did this, we would have world peace because a stalemate would occur. Heck.. i really do hope Russia does this now, followed by China, North Korea and all others.

The US has 5 times the number of operational sattelites in orbit than the Russians do. The Russian simply can not afford it.

Arbitrageur
Sound out in open air won't return radar, however sound hitting surfaces vibrates the surfaces and theoretically those vibrations might be detected with radar. I figured it was theoretically possible...

Doing it that way takes a wad of power and a fairly tight beam to pull off. Basically you're getting a doppler off of a moving surface. The returns are miniscule and you have to dig for them with some pretty spiffy DSP tricks. You need a fairly sizy surface too. Can't do that from a satellite.

This is sort of the low frequency way of doing the laser-on-the-window trick.

If you put the right sort of widget in the room first, you can get a LOT bigger return, and you can get a more readily interpretable return. The Russians came up with that one back in the 40's.

Sort of analogous to sticking one of those little clear plastic conjugate reflector decals on the outside of the window, I suppose. You can get way off-axis with your laser and you get a lot better return.

What bothers me about that explanation is the "clothing" surface being a suitable surface, as I wouldn't think clothing would work all that well.

It doesn't. You want some nice wallboard for a good surface. FWIW, you can use UWB to get some nice returns from organics on the other side of the wall. I can, for instance, use a widget on the wall and tell you a LOT about the folks in the next room. Size, number, who's moving, who's sitting, their disposition in the room, the general emotional state (i.e. are they onto you being there yet). I would suspect the later versions would be able to dump the room's audio from the return data.

But that won't work from a satellite either.

Further, deponent sayeth not, especially not on the open forum part of ATS.