Any guess at the bandwidth that link would support? And any idea what 80 db equates to in terms of the spot on the ground?
The bandwidth would be enormous, basically at least everything from say 50mhz to 300ghz. The spot the antenna observes covers the entire disc of the Earth but probably can be tightened by selectively deforming the shape of the dish. The capabilities of a system like this are staggering. This thing probably sucks up and translates to the ground via a smaller dish several terabytes of data an hour. basically I’d think they would record every interesting swath of rf spectrum 24/7.
These birds can transmit rf as well. you could use them to spoof just about any type of ground communications. A cellphone somewhere on the ground, a handheld radio carried by a soldier in Iran...whatever.