Posted on 01/28/2009 12:48:03 PM PST by gandalftb
The NRO payload on the Delta 4-Heavy is a 5-to-6 ton eavesdropping spacecraft with a high tech deployable antenna as wide as 350 feet.
The spacecraft is to enhance the capability for the U.S. to listen in on communications in hostile governments like Iran and terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda.
The satellite is likely an "Advanced Mentor" design. Earlier versions were designated Orion.
These spacecraft provide the kind of information the White House, State Dept. and Pentagon need to make military and national foreign policy decisions.
It is also likely a "broad spectrum" satellite that can update key frequency information on hostile radars and other detection systems that could threaten U.S. forces.
(Excerpt) Read more at spaceflightnow.com ...
NRO = National Reconnaissance Office
This monster delivers 1.9 million pounds of thrust, carrying a 5-6 ton Defense Support Program 23 satellite to geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles above the Earth. For comparison, that's about a third of the Saturn V moon rockets.
Some estimate the total cost of the rocket plus payload at over $2 billion.
This payload is from the Rhyolite lineage which evolved from Orion.
Here's the liftoff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS7l1M6UffM
This satellite gives us the best notice of rocket launches and nuclear weapon tests anywhere in the world.
Money well spent.
Obama will order it turned off....
Exactly, cutting the space program budget, against the militarization of space, etc.
He thinks that the government is the answer to everything EXCEPT space exploration, which should be the ONLY privately funded concern.
And as you develop rocket and satellite deployment systems, you also develop MISSILE technology, which may be sought out by those in other (sometimes hostile) countries.
With a 350’ dish in geosync orbit about 23,000 miles above the equator they can pick up pretty much anything!
The low-noise front end equipment cooled down to near absolute zero would pick up such faint signals that it is as though the NSA now has a listening post withing a few feet of EVERY location within sight of the dish.
The dish is almost certainly able to deform from a narrow spot beam to a beam width wide enough to cover the entire side of the earth that is beneath it.
The sensitivity of this system has to be so great that it can easily pick up rf radiation from sources the average person would not even consider to be radiating rf. Fire up a laptop in a remote area and the rf emitted from it could be detected, a gps receiver gives off enough rf to be detected, the processor in an mp3 player....... and pretty much any rf receiver design let alone transmitters, transmitters of any strength would put extremely powerful signals into this system.
If you pointed this thing at Mars it would have no trouble detecting weak rf sources like the rovers...so imagine what it can hear on the Earth just 23,000mi away.
The other sweet part is that this sat networks with all other sats to compare signals and using the doppler effect will be able to track movement of transmitters like cell phones.
We have a new agency that distributes the SIGINT to 15 other intel agencies real time. No more morning after reports.
Also, a 350ft system in geosync would allow you to create an RFID system. Small, passive RFID chips that need no power supply could be placed on or inside things (even people). These tiny wafers would operate much like the tags placed inside pets for ID, but at higher frequencies.
Charge up a small bank of capacitors on the satellite using a solar array and use that to send a very high power rf pulse to the ground with the dish set at minimum beam width and given the enormous db gain of the dish you are talking about gigawatt+ pulses of rf that could light up the RFID chips and give you a readable return signal.
Track men and machines using tiny RFID wafers.
Could be happening already.
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