Free Republic

The giant gold and silver satellite glittered against the black sky as space shuttle Atlantis closed in on it from below. Commander Hoot Gibson and pilot Guy Gardner flew the approach, while mission specialist Mike Mullane, at the other end of the flight deck, readied the shuttle’s robot arm for a capture. Downstairs in the airlock, mission specialists Jerry Ross and Bill Shepherd waited in their spacesuits for Gibson’s order to go outside and attempt a rescue. The mission of STS-27 had been to deploy the first in a series of new spy satellites that used radar to observe ground...

The nation that made it to the Moon in 12 years now struggles to build a satellite in that time and is at risk of losing its preeminence in space. Those words come from one of the top four space intelligence lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, chairman of the House Select technical and tactical intelligence subcommittee, who spoke before an audience of some 1,200 intelligence practitioners and industry at the Geoint annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. Ruppersburger noted that 20 years ago the U.S. had 70 percent of the commercial satellite market which is now down to...