US Launches Largest Spy Satellite Ever 213
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Space.com reports that over the weekend, a giant booster – a Delta 4 Heavy rocket — carrying a secret new spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office roared into space to deliver into orbit what one reconnaissance official has touted as 'the largest satellite in the world.' The Delta 4 Heavy rocket is the biggest unmanned rocket currently in service and has 2 million pounds of thrust, capable of launching payloads of up to 24 tons to low-Earth orbit and 11 tons toward the geosynchronous orbits used by communications satellites. The mammoth vehicle is created by taking three Common Booster Cores — the liquid hydrogen-fueled motor that forms a Delta 4-Medium's first stage — and strapping them together to form a triple-barrel rocket, and then adding an upper stage. The exact purpose of the new spy satellite NROL-32 is secret, but is widely believed to be an essential eavesdropping spacecraft that requires the powerful lift provided by the Delta 4-Heavy to reach its listening post. 'I believe the payload is the fifth in the series of what we call Mentor spacecraft, a.k.a. Advanced Orion, which gather signals intelligence from inclined geosynchronous orbits,' says Ted Molczan, a respected sky-watcher who keeps tabs on orbiting spacecraft. Earlier models of the series included an unfurling dish structure about 255 feet in diameter with a total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds, costing about $750 million and designed to monitor specific points or objects of interest such as ballistic missile flight test telemetry."
We launched a larger one EONS ago. (Score:3, Funny)
That's no Moon.
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...that's my stash of CHEESE!
Re:We launched a larger one EONS ago. (Score:5, Funny)
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
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Your bizarre parody (and yes, I loved it) falls down on two major points -- the moon is in fact mentioned in texts older than fifty years (one, the Bible is about 5,000 years old), and my parents were both alive during the Great Depression. Had the oon suddenly appeared then, somebody would have noticed.
Nice parody anyway.
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Obviously there was a massive rewrite of history and some mind-altering drugs involved.
Re:We launched a larger one EONS ago. (Score:5, Funny)
Apocryphal story, but worth telling:
Back in the 1800s, a dignitary once asked a prominent Huron chief, "Do you know why the sun never sets on the British Empire?"
The chief thought for a moment, then replied, "Because God doesn't trust your Queen in the dark."
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Article Posted by Soulskill on Monday November 22, @01:33PM.
Death Star quote posted by dmomo on Monday November 22, @01:35PM.
Two minutes? We're slipping.
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Well then you forgot to paint it a stealth color. It stands out like a silvery sore thumb on dreamy, steamy, romantic nights.
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Oops (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oops (Score:5, Informative)
Well it is hard to keep something 300 meters across in space a secret. Simple truth is that just about everybody that cared knew what type of satellite it was from the launch point and the launch vehicle. A friend of mine works on the Centaur and I saw him on Sunday. I asked how work was and he told me about the upcoming launch.
It went like this.
"Yeah it is going up on a Delta 4 heavy."
"Really DOD?"
"No NRO".
If it is a Delta 4 heavy with a Centaur from the Cape you can bet money it is a sigint bird.
The capabilities are what is secret. But it can probably pick up a cell phone or wifi for geosync.
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Hard to tell with the professionally paranoid, how do you know this one isn't designed to look out rather than in, something they are not likely to admit any time soon.
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With a dish the size of a football field I wouldn't be surprised if it could read the scan line on a CRT. Think about that...
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That be like a programmer bragging "I made a printer driver that was 4 GIGS, biggest print driver EVER!". Seriously, bragging about the size is retarded. Then they go on to brag at how awesome of a launch system they needed just to get it into space. Something like "The driver was so bloated people had to buy new computers just to install the driver!"
On a related note, the city of Tokyo is REALLY big. It is such a bi
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Don't worry, they'll get around to it eventually:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megazone_23 [wikipedia.org]
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This is NOTHING!
In old Soviet Union, we had five-year plan. Succeeded to build world's largest microchip! An achievement that stands yet, today and never it has been exceeded.
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The IBM Power7 (567 square millimeters, 1.2 billion transistors) is ten times larger than the Soviet K1801VM3 microprocessor (52.6 square milimeters, 200 thousand transistors.)
Re:Oops (Score:5, Funny)
A 4 Gigabyte printer driver? Really? Please have your friend contact me immediately!
Snidely Earnest
HR Manager
- Hewlett Packard
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Ever wonder why cellphone cameras haven't displaced SLRs yet? It really does come down to the size of the sensor, and the size of the lens needed to gather energy for that sensor.
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It's not a piece of electronics, it's a spacecraft. We have different expectations for spacecraft, although they tend to be based on mass rather than volume.
Re:Oops (Score:5, Interesting)
And the Hubble is based on a KH12 [wikipedia.org] spy satellite, just pointed in the opposite direction. In fact, it's so close in design that it shared the same optical flaw as an early KH12 design. The NSA and NRO (who knew about the defect because they'd already had problems with it with their own satellites) debated on whether to tell NASA; if they did they'd be essentially publishing the specs of the KH12 to the world (NASA is incapable of keeping a secret), but if they didn't then NASA would have a defective instrument. They chose the latter, and were thoroughly roasted for it (the repairs to the Hubble were a billion-dollar proposition and a public embarrassment), though of course revealing exact intelligence-gathering capability is never a good idea.
Repurposing and shared-mission SIGINT satellites for scientific use is as old as space flight itself.
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Repurposing and shared-mission SIGINT satellites for scientific use is as old as space flight itself.
And it goes much further than that. R-7 family of rockets is probably the most striking example - a rocket which launched the first satellite and first human in space; which launches to this day Soyuz & Progress spacecraft and many other payloads.
It was also the first operational ICBM, R-7 Semyorka (not a very good ICBM, not very practical - but turned out to be a fabulous launcher, the most reliable and most frequently used launch vehicle in the world [esa.int], and that's coming from, basically, its competitor)
Re:Oops (Score:4, Insightful)
The NSA and NRO (who knew about the defect because they'd already had problems with it with their own satellites) debated on whether to tell NASA; if they did they'd be essentially publishing the specs of the KH12 to the world (NASA is incapable of keeping a secret), but if they didn't then NASA would have a defective instrument. They chose the latter, and were thoroughly roasted for it (the repairs to the Hubble were a billion-dollar proposition and a public embarrassment), though of course revealing exact intelligence-gathering capability is never a good idea.
That story sounds "too good to check". Source?
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I've always been curious as to why the manufacturer didn't tell NASA that there was a problem with the mirror. There's almost no way that they wouldn't have known as they did their quality control measurements.
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Its existance isn't a secret, but its purpose and workings are.
The largest satellite in the world... (Score:2, Funny)
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I hope that's not a verbatim quote. He also overlooked the fact that Earth's Moon is a satellite and most likely larger than the spy satellite they launched (The ISS is also likely to be larger, and it too is a satellite.)
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Somewhat the other way around - it seems what the official talks about is the physical size of the antenna, deployed after launch (apparently around 100m). When it comes to mass it's apparently quite average, and nowhere near the top - that title certainly goes to the ISS... (yes, yes, "modular" - well, just one major ISS module launched by Proton or Shuttle, or ATV launched by Ariane (to use some examples related to ISS; there are other) is ~2x more)
Also, heavy version of Atlas V is the biggest, for some
more expense (Score:2, Funny)
Re:more expense (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm am American who is proud of our technological superiority over the rest of the world.
Was the pun intended?
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I'm am American who is proud of our technological superiority over the rest of the world.
I'm an American who is proud of our technological ability but not naive enough to believe we have superiority. Sure, we do a lot of things really well (aerospace, computers, medicine) but other countries are ahead of us in certain areas. Russia builds some really amazing rockets and missiles that don't compare to anything in the West. There is no Western equivalent of Russia's supersonic anti-ship missiles. Or their 200 knot torpedoes.
Anybody that doesn't think our enemies wouldn't have a few rude surp
Re:more expense (Score:4, Informative)
Well, this one will be placed at 44 degrees E, so it's probably not aimed at you - more at Russia, Caucasus, Middle East, perhaps Somalia.
(that said, the one being "replaced" by this launch was moved just to the west of Europe; so between the two of them there's probably a nice view of the EU)
I like big boosters! (Score:4, Funny)
I like big boosters and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a rocket flys in with an itty bitty thruster
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, wanna pull out your tough
'Cause you notice that booster was stuffed
Deep in the propellant she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh baby, I wanna get with you
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me
But that booster you got makes me so horny
Ooh, Rump-o'-smooth-skin
You say you wanna get in my Benz?
Well, use me, use me
'Cause you ain't that average groupie
I've seen them dancin'
To hell with romancin'
She's sweat, wet,
Got it goin' like a turbo 'Vette
I'm tired of magazines
Sayin' flat boosters are the thing
Take the average black man and ask him that
She gotta pack much back
So, fellas! (Yeah!) Fellas! (Yeah!)
Has your spacefriend got the booster? (Hell yeah!)
Tell 'em to shake it! (Shake it!) Shake it! (Shake it!)
Shake that healthy booster!
Baby got back!
can't find Ossama to the B Laden! (Score:2)
Up here in space
I'm looking down on you.
My lasers trace
Everything you do.
You think you've private lives
Think nothing of the kind.
There is no true escape
I'm watching all the time.
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam.
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean.
I'm elected electric spy
I'm protected electric eye.
Always in focus
You can't feel my stare.
I zoom into you
You don't know I'm there.
I take a pride in probing all your secret moves
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove.
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam
Houston, we have multiple problems (Score:2)
Hmmm....I wonder what the human consequences of aging spy satellites providing erroneous information could be?
And, does anyone know John Connor?
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None. It either works, or it doesn't.
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The problem isn't erroneous information, its that the fuel runs low so they can't be retasked or have orbits boosted (in the case of LEO satellites) as often, power levels drop as the solar panels get older and they enter safe modes more often than they were designed for.
The follow on satellite designs and programs were delayed and costs overran, thats why they are being used longer and longer.
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Also at GEO mere stationkeeping makes the fuel run low.
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Older spy sats would expend lots of delta-v to fly in close to observe then adjust back to an orbit high enough to be stabile. I assume the recent ones simply correct for atmospheric turbulance and get perfect pictures from GEO (couple of technologies for that these days), so they don't eat all their fuel in 3 years.
crappy site (Score:2, Informative)
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Crappy TFA site sports pernicious popups.
It does? You must be doing it wrong.
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awesome until proven useless (Score:2)
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Will it.. (Score:2)
But will it find Bin Laden?
Of course even if they did find him it wouldn't stop the terrorism.
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But will it find Bin Laden?
No. It is intended to spy on US citizens. Have you been following American news for the past few years? Don't worry though. If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.
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"Wrong" may or may not include the following activities: breathing, eating or sleeping.
Not spying on the US (Re:Will it...) (Score:2, Interesting)
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Whole of Asia, basically. And one was moved to a place apparently suited to covering western part of the EU, hm...
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Actually it might. This is a sigint/comint bird. Not really much of leak since it is a big honking satellite on a Delta 4 heavy with a Centaur upper stage launched from the Cape.
Really that was a given. This can pick up just about any wireless communication so yes it may find Bin Laden and it may stop a terrorist attack. It may do a lot of things.
Sigint/Commint is has been very useful for a very long time.
In fact looking at your email address you may want to look up your own nation's history. A good part o
Re:Will it.. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it might. This is a sigint/comint bird.
You can keep tabs what orbital slot it ends up in by watching the seesat-l [satobs.org] mailing list that Ted Molczan contributes to.
Re:Will it.. (Score:4, Interesting)
commint? .uk email address?
That's a total Enigma to me.
Re:Will it.. (Score:4, Funny)
I know I was making a Colossus assumption.
Re:Will it.. (Score:4, Funny)
When Seven of Nine's husband Jack was running against Barack Obama for the Illinois US Senate seat, he was caught up in a sex scandal and the Republicans searched for a replacement. They found a guy from Maryland, a black fellow who'd never set foot in Illinois before.
A comedian said (and sorry, I've forgotten the guy's name), "Those Republicans! First they can't find Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, then they couldn't find WMDs in Iraq, and now thay can't even find a black man in Chicago!"
Isn't the largest satellite... (Score:5, Funny)
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I was thinking Jupiter might be the largest known satellite, but I suspect most of the stars in the Milky Way orbiting the central black hole (or whatever it is) are probably larger.
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That's be Jupiter. Except the Sun is a satellite of the galaxy's core, and there are whole dwarf galaxies orbiting ours...
Don't be pedantic, lest someone else out-pedant you.
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That's be Jupiter. Except the Sun is a satellite of the galaxy's core, and there are whole dwarf galaxies orbiting ours...
Don't be pedantic, lest someone else out-pedant you.
That'd be "That'd" be Jupiter.
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and there are whole dwarf galaxies orbiting ours...
Slaves to Armok III: Dwarf Galaxy?
Now *that* would be a sandbox game.
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I was going to say the biggest satellite ON EARTH, but then I remember how the moon was formed -- it actually was on Earth; or at least, splashed from here when a Mars-sized rock smashed the Earth.
I think the ISS may be bigger, too.
TSA satellite of love (Score:2, Funny)
Now we can see your junk from orbit.
The Metric system troll (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought we all agreed to keep it metric after the last little 'mishap' with the Mars orbiter.
Imperial units are sooo 2 centuries too old!
Maybe you didn't get the memo?
If I'm reading it on Slashdot, it ain't secret... (Score:2)
a Delta 4 Heavy rocket — carrying a secret new spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office roared into space to deliver into orbit what one reconnaissance official has touted as 'the largest satellite in the world.' The Delta 4 Heavy rocket is the biggest unmanned rocket currently in service and has 2 million pounds of thrust, capable of launching payloads of up to 24 tons to low-Earth orbit and 11 tons toward the geosynchronous orbits used by communications satellites
Anything else that you can tell us about the secret satellite?
The mammoth vehicle is created by taking three Common Booster Cores — the liquid hydrogen-fueled motor that forms a Delta 4-Medium's first stage — and strapping them together to form a triple-barrel rocket, and then adding an upper stage. The exact purpose of the new spy satellite NROL-32 is secret, but is widely believed to be an essential eavesdropping spacecraft that requires the powerful lift provided by the Delta 4-Heavy to reach its listening post. 'I believe the payload is the fifth in the series of what we call Mentor spacecraft, a.k.a. Advanced Orion, which gather signals intelligence from inclined geosynchronous orbits,' says Ted Molczan, a respected sky-watcher who keeps tabs on orbiting spacecraft. Earlier models of the series included an unfurling dish structure about 255 feet in diameter with a total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds, costing about $750 million and designed to monitor specific points or objects of interest such as ballistic missile flight test telemetry."
M'kay . . . can you send me the password to will cause that mother-fucker crash down?
The really super secret satellites . . . well, we don't hear anything about them . . . and we shouldn't, either.
Mum's the word . . . (Score:2)
Considering that ANY launch into space is probably gonna be noticed, it would be a lot easier just to piggyback satellites than try to make a secret unnoticed launch.
Quiet! You didn't hear it here first!
Mum's the word
Meaning
Keep quiet - say nothing.
Origin
Mum; not mother but 'mmmmm', the humming sound made with a closed mouth. Used by Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 2, 1592:
"Seal up your lips and give no words but mum."
255-foot dish? (Score:2)
Earlier models of the series included an unfurling dish structure about 255 feet in diameter with a total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds
The whosit whatnow?
The MAGNUM-ORION 1-3 spacecraft introduced the third larger unfurling dish structures "wrap-rib" large deployable bleached white gold colored mesh covered receiving dish antenna design of about 255 feet in diameter with a total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds.
Oh. Of course, the old unfurling dish structures "wrap-rib" large deployable bleached white gold colored mesh covered receiving dish antenna design.
Sort of heavy (Score:2)
Hmmm, how heavy? Like in "heavy metal" heavy? Like Uranium-heavy? No, couldn't be.... right?
bet it has a tag on it (Score:2)
Bet it has a tag on it that says 'Made in China'.
We have come along way (Score:5, Informative)
And to think only 45 years ago, all we could manage was 135 tons to low earth orbit on the Saturn V.
Wow, what progress.
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Almost mass-produced, medium-sized, modular launchers are probably the better way (this Delta does show some of those aspects - and, say, Angara will be very nicely scalable, from 1 to 7 identical core modules) than some huge, rarely launched rocket & the infrastructure required by it.
Especially since we're quite good, for a long time now, at autonomous docking and on-orbit assembly.
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Well, we could have had the Ares V, which would have lifted 200 tons to LEO, but Obama canceled it. Of course, since Obama is the anointed one, we all have to pretend this is a good thing and spout rhetoric like, "Ares was expensive"
The Ares V was a bait-and-switch. You spend the big bucks for the Ares V and you get... the Ares I. There were numerous deep problems with the program, but this was one of the biggest. You didn't actually get development towards an Ares V until many years into development.
Second, the Ares I is a redundant rocket (which duplicates the Delta IV Heavy and near future Atlas V Heavy). This was the reason I opposed the Ares program almost from the day it was announced. NASA has a terrible record [transterrestrial.com] (mainly from t
When propaganda calls it a spy satellite... (Score:2, Interesting)
in the world? (Score:2, Insightful)
How is it the largest satellite in the world if it's not ... uhh... in the world?
Uh oh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Semantics (Score:2)
The Shuttle, empty and floating in orbit, has a mass of roughly 2000 metric tons. Perhaps, for semantics, we won't consider that a satellite, either.
For more conventional sa
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The Shuttle has a bit over 100 tonnes... (it's not a single stage to orbit after all - and we probably won't really have this for some time - considering how fabulous an ordinary rocket ends up, if using technology comparable to what is required to make SSTO even barely possible)
That gamma observatory certainly wasn't the heaviest - few years older Almaz-T was ~18.5t, Proton satellites from the 1960s already ~17t, so I guess there were quite a few heavier ones, on both sides (also, wasn't Titan IV already a
Illustration of the antenna is misleading. (Score:4, Informative)
One of the linked articles shows a rough illustration of the antenna: A big parabolic umbrella with a forest of feed "horns" (Actually log-periodic crossed YAGIs) on one end of the main satellite at the focus. This maps the feed horns' patterns into an equivalent hexagonal array of slightly overlapping regions on the Earth's surface.
However the illustration also has each feed horn illuminated by a patch on a similar hexagonal array laid out on the surface of the mirror umbrella. That's bogus. In such an antenna the whole reflector illuminates each of the horns.
It's equivalent to a camera lens or a reflector telescope - where light for each pixel on the film is collected by the whole lens/main mirror, but each pixel is illuminated by light arriving from a different direction. The bigger the lens/mirror, the more light that's collected for each pixel, and the tighter the focus, i.e. the larger the number of pixels and the smaller the area each one covers. This is the same game with the "film" consisting of an array of antennas, rather than silver grains or photosensitive spots on a retina chip.
5900 lbs into orbit (Score:2)
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Nice to know... (Score:2)
Used to live in Cape Canaveral . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
largest? (Score:2)
Though I did not see any numbers specific to NROL-32, I saw where other satellites in the series were near 6000lbs. There are commercial satellites in operation now with nearly three times that mass, so being "the largest satellite in the world" either means the other stated "largest spy satellite" or more likely the one with the "biggest penis" or "dish" for the layman.
Why Does It Have To Be A Spy Sat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not a weapon? [wikipedia.org]
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Want to learn how to make money selling books? All you have to do is buy my book!
Oh come on, get real... (Score:2)
If you're so successful, why the fuck are you linking people to Facebook instead of a proper website? Fehkoff, cock-gobbler.
It's probably not the real "Donald Brownlie Fleming" that posted here at Slashdot, just some asshat who wants to make trouble for the guy.
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It is secret in the same way that Area 51 and the Pentagon are secret. Everyone who cares can hop in a car and see them. They are secret in that we don't know exactly what they do.
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The fact that it has been launched isn't the secret. Its capabilities and purpose are. Those tend not to be precisely determinable at a distance.
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Let me slug you over that. (Score:3, Informative)
The "total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds"? What is this in kilograms? I know at sea level 1 pound is about 2.2. kg - but in low earth orbit?
Sorry, AC. "Slugs" (mass that weighs one pound under one standard g) never caught on in general American English usage. A one-standard-g field is assumed when the context says you're talking about mass and the unit is given as force (weight). The distinction is reserved for discussions among practitioners, teachers, and students of specialized fields (such
Let me slug myself now... (Score:3, Informative)
"Slugs" (mass that weighs one pound under one standard g) never caught on in general American English usage.
Oops. Meant pound-mass (lb-sub-m lbm ), not slug. A slug is about 32.17405 lb-mass, the mass which accelerates by one foot per second squared under a force of one pound.
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Nathaniel hawthorne knew that in 1850. [ibiblio.org]
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Please dispense "ever". It redundant.
FTFY.
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Had it said, "US Launches Largest Spy Satellite," I would have wondered if the Soviets/Russians had previously launched a larger spy satellite. It's a reasonable guess -- the Soviets were tossing some pretty big chunks of metal skyward, including the Gorizont series that massed over 2000kg and the early Proton series of satellites, at least one of which massed over 11,000kg. Gorizonts were for communications and the early Proton satellites were for scientific research, but I'm sure Moscow had/has some pre
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They are hunting voice prints, known numbers/calls, locations and anything from consumer grade junk.
The raw data is bounced around to a safe location with a lot of cpu power for sorting and finally encrypted back to the USA.
Satellites just collect and pass on the info with location data.
Depending on the location expect a black ops team or a drone if your voice print is known.
Any state sponsor or government trained consultant should be telling their cl