Subject: Tracking and imaging spysats: not a worry? From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson) Date: 1996/08/14 Message-Id: <thomsonaDw52sK.ML3@netcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.space.policy,alt.politics.org.cia,sci.space.tech The recently developed capability for amateur observers to image satellites in LEO was featured in a story in the current Space News and elicited an interesting reaction from Space Command. New Software Enables Amateurs to Track Satellites By Leonard David Space News, August 12-18 1996, p. 8 [EXCERPTS] WASHINGTON - Off-the-shelf telescopes, sensors and software are now so powerful that amateur skywatchers are able to track and photograph orbiting spacecraft with a degree of detail previously available only to the military. Satellite sleuthing equipment and techniques have reached a new level of maturity, spurred by work conducted at the Boston Museum of Science's Gilliland Observatory in Massachusetts. At the museum's observatory, modest-sized ground telescopes have been outfitted to track satellites precisely as they move across the horizon. Images are then taken using a video camera ... The videotape recording of a spacecraft can later be analyzed, frame by frame. Typically, some of those frames are nearly free of atmospheric distortion and show a surprising amount of detail, said Ron Dantowitz... [who] has spearheaded the satellite tracking effort. "It's amazing what amateurs can do with advents in technology and computers," Dantowitz told Space News in a July 26 phone interview. "It's a great project to work on. It has taken < about a year from start to where we are now... < Imagery also has been collected of... a number of U.S. scientific, military and intelligence-gathering spacecraft. "We actually have been able to observe the Lacrosse and < other spy satellites at extremely high resolution. But we're < not interested in publishing any of those pictures," Dantowitz said. Lacrosse is a radar imaging satellite operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. So far, the ability of amateurs to peek in on classified satellites does not have the military concerned. "The U.S. Space Command is not concerned about the amateur < capabilities for any of the satellites that we control," said < Franki Webster, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colo. Dantowitz said that the satellite tracking software for telescopes is now being sold to other amateur astronomers and observatories. Either Ms. Webster is being evasive -- it may be that the NRO exercises separate control of its satellites --, or lawyerly -- obviously the issue is the ability of hostile countries, not amateur observers, to track and image satellites -- or the U.S. reconnaissance community has decided that foreign knowledge of the orbits and appearance of the satellites isn't a threat to their systems -- which is incorrect. Tracking and identification are fundamental first steps in developing space denial capabilities, and it should be worrisome that an ability to do both can be developed so readily. I wonder if the NRO shares Space Command's opinion. BTW, I'm not saying that the folks in Boston have done Something Awful. The video cameras and computer controlled mounts needed for the kind of imaging they're doing have been available throughout the world for many years, albeit at higher prices than amateurs could generally afford. It would be surprising if a dozen or so countries (make up your own list) haven't been imaging U.S. spysats for a decade or more.