Conference 7.286::space

    
    Referring to recent book "Deep Black" by Burrows, about
    aerial- and space-based reconnaissance technology,
    "KH-13" (as opposed to KH-12) might be the designation
    for the [future/proposed] unmanned version of the space station. 
    This is presented as mere speculation by Burrows.
    
    Incidentally, has the US Gvt put, or attempted to place
    restrictions  on   use of SPOT (French) or EOSAT (US)
    commercially-available satellite-derived earth imagery?
    Will it?
           
    Burrows also speculates that the Cassegrain primary mirror
    diameter in KH-12 is in excess of 1.6 meters, partly on the
    basis of the diameter of mirrors donated by NASA to educational
    observatories. I guess Perkin-Elmer supplied the HST
    (Hubble Space Telescope) optics. Is that also true for
    KH-12? Any comments?
    

    More info on KH-12 in 458.8. Naturally now we all know what STS-27
    really carried aloft.... but the 57 degree orbital inclination limit
    holds true for any future KH-12/Shuttle mission. So, I think that
    KH-12 will be launched in the next few years by Titan-4's, from
    the much less "public-infested" Vandemberg range.
    One question : how the Lacrosse radar satellite fit in the overall
    US recon strategy ? Personnaly I think it will co-operate wonderfully
    with the (supposed) infrared sensor on KH-12. Comments ?
    

Date: 12 Apr 89 17:57:35 GMT
From: [email protected]  (Greg Goebel)
Subject: Re: RE: Hubble Space Telescope
 
    Spy Satellites:  Entering a New Era
 
   Daniel Charles
 
   SCIENCE / VOL 243 / 24 MAR 89 / PP 1541-1543
 
    * After waiting two years for the return of the space shuttle,
America's intelligence agencies have begun to launch a constellation
of new spy satellites.  All three of the shuttle launches since the
Challenger accident have added important links to this surveillance
network.  By the end of 1989, if all goes well, three new reconnaissance 
spacecraft will be in orbit, collecting unprecedented amounts of 
information on military "targets" around the world. 
 
The first of the new satellites flew into orbit last December aboard the
shuttle Atlantis; it is apparently a high-resolution radar-reconnaissance
satellite, the first such military satellite that the US has put into orbit.
The system's codename is apparently Lacrosse (but was earlier referred to as
Indigo).
 
Late this year, the first two KH-12 spy satellites are scheduled to fly into
orbit aboard Titan IV rockets.  The KH-12 is the latest and most advanced in a
long line of photoreconnaissance satellites, which use a powerful telescope to
take pictures in the visible and infrared.
 
Equally important in this network are the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite
System (TDRSS) satellites, the third of which was launched by Discovery in
March.  Although the military capabilities of TDRSS are secret, most observers
believe that Lacrosse is using the satellite to relay its data back to Earth.
The KH-12's images will probably be relayed through TDRSS as well.
 
TDRSS is where NASA's science missions and the secret world of military
reconnaissance come in close contact.  Both the military and the shuttle are
"priority 1" users of TDRSS's communications channels.  The satellite's data
flow is scheduled by computer at the TDRSS ground station, located at the White
Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
 
Lower priority users of TDRSS, such as the Hubble Space Telescope or the
Landsat Earth-Imaging satellites, must submit their requests to use TDRSS
without knowing which times are blocked out for military use.
 
The peak rate at which the HST's instruments will send data through TDRSS -- 1
megabit per second (MBPS) -- is a trickle compared with the flood of data
generated by the new spy satellites.  Synthetic-aperature radars like Lacrosse,
in particular, tend to swamp any available data relay, because transmission
capacity and available computing power, not the radar itself, generally limit
the quality and size of the images that the system can produce.
 
Robert Cooper, former head of DARPA (now president of Atlantic Aerospace
Electronics Corporation) noted in an interview that a radar system with a
resolution of 1 foot can generate raw data at a rate of many billions of bits
per second -- far beyond the capacity of any existing links in space.
  
Reducing the raw data to images -- a data stream small enough for TDRSS to
handle -- would require the world's largest supercomputers on board the
spacecraft, said Cooper.  A more likely way of getting around the data
bottleneck is for Lacrosse only to operate intermittently, storing burst of
data on recorders.  These devices could then transmit the data at a slower rate
through TDRSS to Earth.
 
NASA plans to launch its own imaging radar as part of its Earth Observing
System (EOS) sometime in the late 1990s.  The instrument will detect objects
roughly 30 meters across in a swath 50 kilometers wide, with less detail when
the swath is expanded to its maximum width of 700 kilometers.  The data rate of
its transmissions is limited to 300 MBPS, the maximum capacity of TDRSS' two
high-capacity channels.  "The data rate limits everything.  It limits
resolution, gray scale accuracy, and field of view," said one of EOS' designers
at JPL.
 
Because Lacrosse's performance is limited by the capacity of TDRSS, the
pictures it furnishes are less detailed than those from optical systems like
the KH-12, which can detect objects only a few inches across.  According to
John Pike of the American Federation of Scientists, Lacrosse can probably
detect objects as small as 1 meter across, since that level of detail is
necessary to identify important items like Soviet mobile missiles.
 
The radar's chief advantage, however, is its ability to see through the clouds
that generally hide much of the Soviet Union and Europe.
 
Compared with the novelty of Lacrosse, the KH-12 is practically a known
quantity.  In fact, it probably bears a strong resemblance to the HST, since
both were built to fit inside the shuttle cargo bay.  The primary mirror of the
KH-12's telescope can be little larger than the HST's.
 
As a comparison, a telescope with the HST's power in an orbit 200 nautical
miles above the earth could detect objects on the surface 7 inches across.
According to Pike and Jeffrey Richelson of the private National Security
Archive, the KH-12 carries a large quantity of fuel so that it can maneuver to
a low 100-mile orbit to see details half as large.  In order to counter the
distortions caused by the atmosphere, spy satellites use computer-controlled
"adaptive optics" that vary the surface of the mirror minutely.
 
Detecting ever smaller objects, however, is no longer the key to more effective
spying from space, according to reconnaissance experts.  The greatest technical
challenges now lie in programming high-speed computers to unearth valuable
information buried in the mountain of data.
 
Technical experts for the CIA, the Pentagon, and the National Reconnaissance
Office now are struggling to harness computers to the task of filtering out
data sent down from space.  Computers, says former Air Force Secretary Edward
Aldridge (now president of McDonnell Douglas Electronics Corporation),
eventually may help solve a typical dilemma confronting intelligence analysts:
"Somewhere in that data there is a target.  Now, how do you find it ... unless
you take the population of the United States and make them photo interpreters?"
 
The sheer volume of data streaming down through TDRSS, threatening to overwhelm
even armies of analysts, is one source of pressure to automate the
interpretation of photographic intelligence.  But skyrocketing demands on the
intelligence system are even more important.
 
Rather than simply monitor known sites, such as missile silos and airfields,
satellites are now required to find and track Soviet nuclear missiles that move
about from day to day.  This will be necessary to verify future arms control
treaties, but the Air Force also has a less enlightened aim:  targeting the
missiles for destruction in wartime.
 
"As we see [Soviet] leadership and military forces becoming more mobile, it's
putting more demands on us to detect, localize, and hold at risk those forces,"
said Aldridge.  "The biggest difficulty is not searching the target area.  Even
if the sensor has flown over the target, and it is in the database, it still
has to be found."
 
Computers can search the data from a wide area, looking for an electronic
signal that matches the known return from a Soviet missile launcher.  But while
simple in concept, teaching computers to recognize an object -- particularly
when the Soviets are hiding the targets under cover and behind trees -- has
proved difficult in practice.  "We're still 5 years away from the point where
some data comes in and rings a bell and says I've got a target X in location
Y," said Aldridge.
 
The most valuable contribution of computer analysis, said Thomas Rona, deputy
director of the White House Science Office, may be in integrating information
from various sensors, so that one instrument can correct the other's blind
spots.  While the KH-12 might be fooled by a plastic decoy built to look like a
tank, for example, the radar of Lacrosse could immediately tell the difference.
"All sensors lie a little," said Rona.  "The reason that you coalesce
information from all sorts of sensors is that you don't trust any of them."
Attempts to write software capable of integrating data from many sources,
however, have run into major problems, and are not expected to be available for
several years.
 
Complicating the job even more is the growing demand for data from satellites.
Not only the President, but every major military commander around the world can
now request pictures from satellites to help plan military operations.
 
The trend began ten years ago, when the armed forces started a program called
TENCAP (Technical Exploitation of National Capabilities) aimed at making
information from space reconnaissance available to military commanders.  In
1981, the Marines established a TENCAP elective at their staff college; with
the knowledge of TENCAP's existence, under the pressure of crises (such as the
military operations in Beruit and the Persian Gulf) decisions were made to
distribute information that had once been kept under tight control.
 
Said Donald Latham, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control,
Communications, and Intelligence:  "We can move imagery today, worldwide, with
our communications systems.  We've even got suitcase versions of these systems,
where you can look at [an image] and do things with it -- all with soft copy,
without film."
 
It now takes only hours for a picture of a particular scene to get from the
satellite to the military commander who ordered it.  In the future, said
Aldridge, field commanders may be able to look at a scene at the very moment
that the satellite is photographing it.
 
These technical marvels do not come cheap.  The Army is estimated to have
spent somewhere between $840 million and $1 billion during the past decade on a
single system, called the All Source Signal Analysis System, that is designed
to distribute information from various intelligence sources to Army commanders.
Primarily because of problems with software, its delivery is estimated as 2 or
3 years and several hundred million dollars away.
 
According to published reports, the White House has agreed to a demand by the
Senate Intelligence Committee that it spend $6 billion on improving
surveillance systems during the next 5 or 6 years.  The FAS' Pike estimates
that each KH-12 satellite costs between $1.5 and $2 billion, excluding launch
costs.
 

    <Late this year, the first two KH-12 spy satellites are scheduled
    <to fly into orbit aboard Titan IV rockets.
    
    Launching with a Titan IV would permit the use of Vandenberg and a
    polar orbit. The flip side of the coin would be that the hydrazine tank
    will be not fully loaded (see note 458.8). I would assume that the
    first KH-12 will go up with STS-28 (scheduled for next June, if I
    remember well). 

    Marco

How can a spy satellite use adaptive optics?  As I understand the term, it is being
researched by the SDIO for shooting laser beams through the atmosphere.  However,
I think it needs a "pilot" beam of some sort or a reflection so that it can analyze
what distortions the atmosphere is inducing and correct for them.   I doubt that the
Soviets would be kind enough to shoot up a laser beam of known characteristics for
the adaptive optics to analyze.  (I suppose they might consider sending up a very
high powered beam though :-) )

Burns

    re .5
    
    My understanding of adaptive optics as applied to spysats is that
    it has some means of dealing with minor variations in the image that
    are (presumed to be) caused by changes in the atmosphere.
    
    No doubt the details are classified. However, reading a detailed
    description of the optics planned for Mars Observer will give you
    a feel for 'almost state of the art' satellite optics.
    
    re TDRSS - KH-12 link
    
    Does anyone know if they really still plan to use TDRSS for military
    traffic? I know that was the plan and one of TDRSS slips was caused by
    USAF insistance that each TDRS carry an enormous countermeasures
    package to protect it. They eventually gave in and TDRS flew without
    the countermeasures. I got the impression that they planned to shift
    critical traffic to some mixture of DSCS and SDS satellites.
    
    re launch vehicles
    
    I believe they are still planning to launch on a member of the 
    Titan 4 family. Without knowing which one, you can't really say
    whether they will launch with full propellant tanks. Certainly, 
    they could not launch with full tanks on a no upper stage configuration
    (unless they chose to use the KH-12's engine for the final ascent
    phase as was the case with some of the previous spysats).
    
    gary

I read a book on spy satellites called "Deep Black" that talked some about the 
optics used on these satellites.  It seems that they employ a very large 
parabolic mirror which can be flexed and twisted anywhere along its surface to
cancel the effect of the atmospheric distortion.

The book also put forth the notion that all that messing around by the shuttle
astronauts to demonstrate that a satellite can be refueled has nothing to do
with refueling civilian satellites, and everything to do with refueling the
spy sats.

Judging from the hardware that the guy says goes into one of those things, I 
can certainly see that it'd be cheaper to fly a shuttle up to refuel one,
rather than build and deploy a new one (even with a cheap elv).

re Note 491.7 by STAR::BANKS:

> The book also put forth the notion that all that messing around by the shuttle
> astronauts to demonstrate that a satellite can be refueled has nothing to do
> with refueling civilian satellites, and everything to do with refueling the
> spy sats.

Unless you launch shuttles from Vandenburg, you won't be able to refuel a
Titan-launched polar-orbit spy sat.

Bob

    Re: .6
    
    I think TDRSS is the interim solution for the military, and the
    Milstar program will provide the next-generation data link.  Milstar
    is scheduled to become operational in the mid-1990s.

    I did some reading up last night on TDRSS history and, although some
    areas were a little fuzzy, it appears that NASA is the now the only
    user of TDRSS. The fight over the addition of the Batson-II
    countermeasures package was just one of many bueaucratic bungles in the
    TDRSS program.
    
    Milstar is the likely candidate, as .6 mentions. The next generation
    DSP satellites have some satellite-satellite comms capability, so they
    are a possible (the first of these is scheduled to go up on the first
    Titan-4/IUS sometime soon).
    
    Does anyone know the estimated mass of the KH-12?
    
    BTW, the planned KH-12 shuttle launches from Vandenburg would have
    required Atlantis running at 109% thrust which is no longer within
    safety guidlines. A high inclination launch from the Cape would
    probably require similar performance.
    
    gary

    There seems to be some indication that the military
    Space Shuttle launch of this morning was the long-awaited
    KH-12 satellite.
    
    Are we likely to get any verification of this possibility?

    The visual observation of the STS-28 will give a
    good indication of the orbit.  Each spy satellite
    has a perfered orbit thus one can make a good guess,
    but it is a guess....
    
    For example given a Soviet Cosmos launch and
    the following data -  inclination & min/max height - one can classify the
    satellite mission...  What is fun is when one does not
    fit the know orbit, for example 1989-056A has a orbit
    that the Soviets have not used in 15 years thus it 
    makes it hard to figure out what this bird is, but
    you do know it is a new bird.  The reason for saying
    it was a new bird was also simple, orbit changes took
    two day before the first change and again it took another
    two days before the second orbit correction.  The Soviets
    normaly only take a few to tens of orbits before orbit
    corrections with the exceptions of experimental birds....
    The inclination/height is that of a man/space_plane but
    the rest of the orbit is that of a recon...  It just
    missed seeing the STS-28 launch but about 20 min, unless
    they did an orbit correction.   
    
    
    jb
                                    

From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: clari.news.gov.international,clari.tw.space
Subject: Report: U.S. spy satellites watch settlement activity
Keywords: international, non-usa government, government, space, science
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 10 Jan 92 13:56:29 GMT

	JERUSALEM (UPI) -- The United States is using satellites to spy on
Israel's building activities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
and gain hard evidence to support a possible denial of $10 billion in
loan guarantees, a published report said Friday.
	The decision to use the satellites resulted from frustration over
Israel's vague and contradictory answers to repeated requests for
information on the extent of construction in the occupied territories,
the daily newspaper HaAretz said.
	American officials decided using their satellite was the only way to
insure accurate information about the scope, substance, and location of
the building activity, the newspaper said.
	A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv refused to comment on
the report, calling it an intelligence matter.
	President Bush has repeatedly called on Israel to freeze the building
of settlements in the occupied territories, which Israel captured in the
1967 Middle East war.
	He has suggested that failure to comply would jeopardize Israel's
receipt of a U.S. guarantee against dlrs 10 billion that Israel wants to
borrow to help build housing for newly arrived Soviet immigrants.
	According to HaAretz, analysis of the satellite reports shows that
building activity in the territories has doubled since 1990, a rate
which would violate the Israeli government's repeated promises to
Washington that it would not exceed last year's rate.
	Both the White House and the State Department are convinced the
satellite reports will make it more difficult for Israel to receive the
loan guarantees with no strings attached, Ha'Aretz said.
	They hope to use the reports to prove their case in Congress, as well
as to the American Jewish community, which has fought for the loan
guarantees.

From:	DECSRC::"[email protected]" "MAIL-11 Daemon" 17-NOV-1992 20:02:10.76
To:	RISKS-LIST:;@UNKNOWN
CC:	
Subj:	RISKS DIGEST 14.06

 RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest  Tuesday 17 November 1992  Volume 14 : Issue 06

        FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS 
   ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator

     Contents:  Photography from orbit (Daniel Burstein)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 12:02 GMT
From: Daniel Burstein <[email protected]>
Subject: Photography from orbit

The following material is from "Space Digest" v15 #425,
distributed as "[email protected]"

The article deals with the newly available, from the RUSSIANS,
satellite photo imagery with resolutions of 1.5 meters.  This is good
enough, to pick out individual cars in parking lots (although not to
read the apocryphal license plates). 

They expect a bit more sharpness after some technical problems get
resolved. 

This is a curious "RISK."  On the one hand, it makes all sorts of
overhead photographic info available.  On the other hand, it also
makes it (almost) available to the general public. 

Is it a "RISK" to find out how many Japanese fishing trawlers are out
there? What about which cars are parked overnight at the take-a-buck
hot sheets motel? 

Article follows:

4- RUSSIAN MILITARY SPACE OBSERVATION DATA ON THE MARKET

   [Ran across a couple of interesting notes, with interesting ramifications.]

   Central Trading Systems in Arlington, Texas has a new product. 
Digitized, very high resolution Russian "Earth Observations" data. 
This data showed up about a month ago when some demonstration data was
circulated within the industry to see if there was some interest in
buying it.  Folks who've analyzed the data say it's in the 1.5-2 meter
resolution range. 

   At that resolution, you can pick out the Christmas tree in front of
the White House, or pick out individual cars in the Pentagon parking
lot on the demo tapes data.  Some rumors circulating in the industry
claim the data could have even a higher resolution quality, but the
data has been poorly digitized from photos.  This data is obvious from
a former "strategic asset" of the Soviet Union. 

   Central Trading systems, can't identify what satellite generated
the photo data, but that the Russians call it a "DD5" system, for
Digital Data 5.  As a representative of the data seller Central
Trading Systems is offering global coverage with an extensive data
archive of digital images.  If the scenes are in the archive,
customers can have the images on data tapes within 2 weeks, delivered
by Federal Express.  If new scenes are required, they can be delivered
with 45 days, weather permitting. Central Trading Systems thinks the
data is delivered digitally in Russian, transferred to photos, and then 
re-digitized.  His offers the possibility that resolution can improve as 
more advanced digitizing and image processing systems are applied. 

   Cost for the data is $3180 (including shipping and handling) for a
13 x 13 Km, 8-bit scene, of 40 mps at 1600 bpi.  Demand is reportedly high. 

   As a side note, on 2 October, a top Russian space commander stated
the Russian military space program will only survive by sharing its
expertise and hardware.  Col General Vladimir Ivanov was quoted in a
Krasnaya Zvezda interview as recommending Russian military space
systems be used for commercial and civilian purposes.  In particular,
he was reported to have stated "Reconnaissance satellites can be
successfully used for long-distance probing of the Earth's surface and
for ecological monitoring without impairing their main task." 

   [Commentary: New competition in the Earth Resources market area. 
There are reportedly warehouses of high-resolution Earth observation
data on both sides of the ex-Iron curtain.  Different organizations
have been selling ex-Soviet observation data in the 10-meter
resolution class, but the data availability and market response has
been poor, partially because the data was only available sporadically
or only in photographic form.  (For obvious reasons, the preference is
for data in digital format.) 

    But if true, a marketable archive of global 2 meter or better data
could be a market gold mine. And the Krasnaya Zveda quote could
indicate regular availability to high-resolution data from Russian
military systems could become official policy and routine. 

   SPOT and Landsat data is about an order of magnitude more coarse,
with some gaps in the digital data coverage available.  The Russian
data prices are also very competitive. I expect if the initial
expectations are proven for this Russian data, then it will capture a
large share of the market within a few years. 

   Again, there can be a substantial commercial market pact from an
ex-Soviet system.  Due to policy considerations, the US government has
been reticent to release high-resolution Earth Observation data, and
has encouraged the use of 100-meter resolution Landsat Data for
commercial or non-critical government needs.  It was only last month
the US Department of Defense even officially revealed the existence of
the office which controlled such space assets. 

   Similarly, SPOT, which has a very large ownership share by the
French government, has not striven to achieve the maximum resolution
in its system.  A higher resolution has been expected in the French
military HELIOS observation system under development. 

   Perhaps the sale of high-resolution Russian data will encourage the
release of high resolution data by Western governments.  But this will
also decimate the existing SPOT or Landsat/EOSAT data markets, when
they still have not reached a critical mass for full commercial
viability.  The best result would be the encouragement of the
construction of commercial Western systems with equivalent capability,
which is well within the capability of the industry. 

   As it stands now, there are still significant unknowns in the
future of commercial Earth observations data.  This new source of
data, if it is proven as reliable and accurate, could substantially
change some of the market assumptions for Earth resources data.] 

------------------------------

End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 14.06
************************

% ====== Internet headers and postmarks (see DECWRL::GATEWAY.DOC) ======
% From: RISKS Forum <[email protected]>
% Subject: RISKS DIGEST 14.06

I find it interesting that the article focused on image resolution, but failed
to talk about "image depth".   What LANDSAT/SPOT lack in resolution, I think
they make up in their ability to provide multi-spectrum images, etc.

If this Russian data is just in the visible light part of the spectrum, they're
only hitting the tip of surface of what is really needed.   However, if the
market is really active for that resolution DESPITE the narrow band they look
at, it would certainly make some investors start salivating on a more capable
satellite at similar resolutions.



- dave