Friday, January 31, 2025
67 Years Ago, We Started To Win The Space Race
I want to take you back to 67 years ago. It is early 1958. I want to transfer you to Titusville, Florida, and Cape Canaveral. It is a dark and cold winter night. Dr. Werner von Braun, a group of rocket engineers originally from Germany, some senior U.S. Army officers, and officials from a government agent named NACA are in a small block house.
A safe distance from them is a launch pad. A U.S. Army medium-range ballistic missile called the Jupiter-C sits on the pad. Most people familiar with the missile would describe it as "the grandson" of the German V-2 rocket. Atop the rocket is an ingenious, tiny shaft. Right below it is a ring of solid field rockets. This tiny spacecraft is called Explorer I. It was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. When the Jupiter-C lifts off and expends all its fuel, it will fall away. The small solid field rockets will ignite. The shaft above these rocket motors will ignite. They will propel the shaft to 17,500 miles per hour and put it into orbit around the Earth.
It is truly a dark night for the men in the blockhouse. On October 4, 1957, The Soviet Union put a round globe named Sputnik I into orbit around the earth. Another Soviet satellite went into orbit soon afterward. The US Navy had attempted two times to launch a spherical satellite into orbit using a Vanguard rocket. Both attempts failed.
It was what we would call "a do-or-die moment." There had not been sufficient time to test the rocket and its payload. President Eisenhower, his cabinet, and people all over the US and the world were watching. Everyone in the tiny blockhouse was tense. The final countdown finished. The Jupiter-C's rocket motor ignited. It lifted off. It cleared the launch pad and began its race to the heavens. It performed flawlessly. When its fuel was expended, it separated from the small cluster of solid fuel rockets and fell away. The solid fuel rockets ignited. The small shaft raced toward LEO (low Earth orbit). The proper velocity was attained to put the shaft into orbit. It began to transmit radio signals heard around the world. The United States was back in "the space race."
There is an ironic footnote to this grand moment in history. Explorer I was ready to launch in 1956, long before Sputnik I was ready. President Eisenhower refused to approve the launch. He did not want a military project to launch the first US satellite.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
A Tumultuous Start For NASA In The Trump Administration
Petro
NASA acting administrator Janet Petro speaks at a NASA Day of Remembrance event at Arlington National Cemetery January 23. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
A tumultuous start to a new administration at NASA
by Jeff Foust
Monday, January 27, 2025
Around the time Donald Trump took the oath of office to serve as the 47th President of the United States on January 20, visitors to NASA’s website would see that the agency’s associate administrator, Jim Free, was named acting administrator. This was not surprising: in the previous three presidential transitions (Obama in 2009, Trump in 2017, and Biden in 2021), the acting administrator stepped in to serve as acting administrator for a few months to, in the case of Robert Lightfoot in the first Trump Administration, more than a year. The website also noted that Cathy Koerner, associate administrator for exploration systems development, had stepped as acting associate administrator; her deputy, Lori Glaze, filled in for Koerner.
“We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump's executive orders,” Petro’s memo stated.
But a couple of hours later, the new Trump White House released a statement listing its choices for interim heads of agencies. For NASA, the White House picked not Free but instead Janet Petro, director of the Kennedy Space Center, to serve as acting administrator. There is no requirement that the associate administrator, the highest-ranking civil servant at the agency, serve as acting administrator, and new presidents can, if they prefer, select someone else. But the choice of Petro took many by surprise: according to some sources, even senior leadership at NASA, which no doubt approved the website changes, were unaware that the Trump Administration picked Petro.
The confusion about who was in charge of NASA led the agency to send a brief statement to reporters that evening: “The Trump Administration has named Janet Petro the acting administrator of NASA, effective Monday. Petro has served as the center director of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.” A spokesperson added that NASA would “work to get additional information to you as soon as possible” about the transition, but the agency didn’t release that additional information as of the end of the week.
That confusion was just part of an unconventional transition. While previous transitions usually publicized who served on the “agency review teams” assigned to NASA to examine programs—and sometimes uncover problems—the incoming Trump Administration elected not to do so. (The identities of the people on that team gradually came to light, including Jim Morhard, NASA deputy administrator in the first Trump Administration, and entrepreneur and longtime space advocate Charles Miller.)
That team did not appear to spend much time at NASA. In an interview in mid-December, outgoing NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy—who served on the Biden Administration’s NASA transition team—noted that while the agency had been informed of who was on Trump’s team, she knew little else about any work they were doing. The transition, she concluded, would be “very compressed.”
The first week of the Trump Administration was tumultuous at NASA, but for reasons not directly linked to space policy. One of the first executive orders issued by President Trump after taking office was to end efforts related to diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI, sometimes with the addition of accessibility, for DEIA) across the federal government. DEI plans, the White House claimed, “demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination,” and the order directed agencies to shut down those efforts and terminate those working on them.
By Wednesday, those efforts were underway at federal agencies, including NASA. Over the course of Wednesday afternoon, people reported that the website for NASA’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity was no longer accessible, returning a “404” error indicating the page had been removed. (Or, as NASA’s site put it: “The cosmic object you were looking for has disappeared beyond the event horizon.”) Because of the intricacies of content delivery systems and caching, some people reported the site was still active while others reported it was down, a superposition that persisted until late in the day, when the site was inaccessible to all.
The same was true for sites at NASA centers associated with diversity efforts. “Office Of Diversity and Equal Opportunity has been decommissioned,” stated the site for the office at the Langley Research Center.
“At NASA and Kennedy Space Center, our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility has been paramount to mission success,” Petro said in a 2021 interview.
An exception, for a time, was one at JPL, which is run by Caltech and not NASA. It remained up through late in the week, highlighting the lab’s diversity efforts and that it had a chief inclusion officer. By the weekend, though, the page listed only generic “benefits and perks,” with no mention of diversity and inclusion.
As the NASA DEI sites were going offline, agency employees received a memo from Petro, the acting administrator. “We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump's executive orders,” the memo stated. “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
The memo included what, to many employees, was ominous language. “We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language,” it stated, calling on employees to report any changes in contract language or job titles made since the November election to an email address at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
“There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information,” the memo stated. “However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.” The memo didn’t elaborate on what those “adverse consequences” might be.
Some who disapproved of the memo turned their frustration and anger towards Petro, but the story is more complicated. The memo that Petro sent to NASA employees was identical to a “template employee letter” included in a memo from Charles Ezell, acting director of OPM, on Tuesday, directing agencies to take measures like removing “outward facing media” about DEIA efforts by Wednesday and report information to the office on DEIA-related positions and contracts.
Petro herself has previously praised NASA’s DEIA efforts. “At NASA and Kennedy Space Center, our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility has been paramount to mission success,” Petro said in an interview with the publication Engineering News-Record in November 2021, several months after becoming director of KSC. “The entire NASA leadership team stands behind this commitment.”
It was also important to her personally, she added. “Since the beginning of my professional journey, I have been in the minority of the organization I belonged to—whether it was flying helicopters in the Army or working as a mechanical engineer or program manager in a commercial aerospace company,” she stated. “I often found myself either the only female, or only one of a couple. There weren’t many minorities either.”
She concluded that, as the center’s director, “I am committed to leading Kennedy Space Center to have a diverse and inclusive environment where everyone can thrive.”
By the end of the week, NASA was working through other aspects of the implementation of the DEIA executive order, including ending contracts and notifying researchers they no longer must include inclusion plans in their grant proposals. The agency was also working on other executive orders, one that placed a hiring freeze on the federal workforce and another that instructed agencies to end remote work arrangements.
“Please continue to remain focused on the mission,” Petro wrote in a memo to employees late Friday, citing ongoing projects and those in development. She added that “our commitment to NASA’s mission remains the same. We all share the aim of ensuring the government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the nation.”
Trump
In his second inaugural address, President Trump said that American astronauts would “plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” (credit: White House)
The uncertain future of Artemis
Unlike some of her predecessors, Petro is not likely to serve as acting administrator for long. At the same time as the White House announced Petro would be acting administrator, it formally nominated Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator, as Trump announced in December (see “Artemis reentry”, The Space Review, December 9, 2024.)
Isaacman has kept a low public profile since that original announcement. He did speak at the Spacepower Conference in December but avoided discussing in details the nomination or his plans for NASA. “I know we can’t be second” in space, he said at the event, urging companies to “crack the code on something other than what we’ve been doing for a while.”
“We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” Trump said.
His nomination continues to have broad support from industry. Members of Congress, including the senators who will take up his nomination, have been quiet, but none have publicly expressed opposition to him. There have been, though, some critiques of Isaacman from conservative groups, who noted that Isaacman has given political donations to Democrats, including in the 2024 election cycle (one of the recipients of his donations was former Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, a Democrat, who won election to the House to represent a Southern California district.) Those groups also noted that Isaacman’s payment processing company, Shift4, had diversity initiatives now frowned upon by the new administration.
The Senate Commerce Committee has yet to schedule a confirmation hearing for Isaacman, but barring any unforeseen delays he is likely to be confirmed in the next couple of months. He will then take office as a new debate rages about the future of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration campaign and potential human missions to Mars.
The idea of scrapping a return to the Moon in favor of Mars was something Trump suggested he would pursue on the campaign trail last fall, and he added new fuel to that debate in his inaugural address. “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” Trump said, comments that generated a line of applause from the audience and support from SpaceX’s Elon Musk, sitting with other VIPs behind the podium.
Trump offered no other details in his speech, including no timetable, although many assumed he wanted astronauts on Mars while he was still in office. While sending humans to Mars in the next four years does not technically violate the laws of physics, it does run afoul of precepts of sound engineering. The next launch window for a Mars mission is late 2026, too soon for even Musk to consider a crewed mission: he said last year he was instead considering launching uncrewed Starships in that opportunity. The following window, two years later, would be too late to get humans on Mars before January 20, 2029, even if all the other obstacles to a crewed mission could be overcome by then.
Those challenges would not prevent the administration from shifting the focus of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts from the Moon to Mars, or at the least making major changes to Artemis. “Regarding space, the Artemis architecture is extremely inefficient, as it is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program,” Musk posted on social media on Christmas Day. “Something entirely new is needed.”
For now, NASA is proceeding with Artemis as-is. Last week, the agency selected nine companies for studies of lunar logistics and surface mobility for later phases of Artemis, when NASA anticipates a longer-term presence on the Moon. The studies will cover topics ranging from cargo handling to trash management.
“I haven’t met Mr. Musk yet, but we’ll see what sort of changes he pushes for,” Rep. Ivey (D-MD) said.
“These contract awards are the catalyst for developing critical capabilities for the Artemis missions and the everyday needs of astronauts for long-term exploration on the lunar surface,” Nujoud Merancy, deputy associate administrator for the Strategy and Architecture Office in the agency’s exploration directorate, said in a statement.
Any major changes to Artemis would likely face opposition by some members of Congress. Notably, the vice chair of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, which funds NASA, in the new Congress is Rep. Dale Strong (R-AL), whose district includes the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Another member of that subcommittee is Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD), who has NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in his district. In comments after a brief appearance earlier this month at the American Astronomical Society conference outside Washington, he said he was not tracking any particular threats to the Earth and space science work done by his center, or to Goddard itself. “I haven’t met Mr. Musk yet, but we’ll see what sort of changes he pushes for,” he said.
Ivey added he had not yet met Isaacman, and didn’t expect to until after Isaacman goes through the Senate confirmation process, but was interested in what he had in mind for the agency. “I don’t mind a fresh start.”
Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.
Russian Spy Ground Stations
ground stations
Multiple beam torus antenna at the GRU station in Klimovsk. Source
The satellite eavesdropping stations of Russia’s intelligence services (part 2)
by Bart Hendrickx
Monday, January 27, 2025
[Part 1 was published last week.]
Antenna systems
All of the GRU and KGB eavesdropping stations have a wide variety of parabolic dish antennas. Some details are available on the antennas built in the Soviet days for the GRU’s Zvezda network. [1] The first Zvezda station near Ventspils in Latvia featured three antennas: a 32-meter antenna called TNA-400, a 16-meter antenna named TNA-110, and an 8-meter antenna designated TNA-97. These were also installed at the Zvezda site near Yakovlevka in the country’s Far East, although one source gives the diameter of the TNA-97 there as 12 meters. Another antenna, measuring 25 meters in diameter, was known as TNA-210. The antennas were also named after planets of the solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto), but there is conflicting information on which antenna had which name.
All of the GRU and KGB eavesdropping stations have a wide variety of parabolic dish antennas.
All or some of these were built by the OKB MEI design bureau in Moscow in cooperation with an institute in Rostov-na-Donu (now known as the Rostov-na-Donu Research Institute for Radio Communications or RNIIRS). The biggest, the TNA-400, was a modified version of an antenna that had been built near Simferopol in Ukraine in the early 1960s to communicate with Soviet lunar and interplanetary probes. (In addition to that, it was also used to eavesdrop on communications between the Apollo astronauts and Mission Control in Houston under a secret program known as Poisk, or “search”.) As mentioned in part 1, the TNA-400 and TNA-110 antennas near Ventspils were refurbished for astronomical observations after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and renamed RT-16 and RT-32. As far as can be assessed, the big Soviet-era antennas at the site near Yakovlevka continue to be used for satellite intelligence today.
ground stations
The 32-meter TNA-400 antenna at the GRU site near Yakovlevka. It was repainted sometime after this photo was taken. Source: Russian social media.
The biggest antenna currently seen at the other GRU sites is a roughly 25-meter antenna at the station in Toivorovo in the St.-Petersburg region. Several have antennas measuring around 16 and 12 meters, some of them placed on circular control buildings very similar to the ones used as part of the Soviet-era ground stations for the Molniya communications satellites. Some could be further modifications of the TNA-210, TNA-110, and TNA-97 antennas originally conceived in the Soviet days. These types are all mentioned in a 2015 article by RNIIRS that discusses improvements in their performance. [2] Smaller antennas of varying sizes are also seen at the GRU stations. Since communications satellites have become much more powerful over the decades, their signals can now be received by antennas up to ten times smaller than the ones needed originally.
ground stations
The 25-meter dish antenna at the GRU’s Zvezda station 41480 in Toivorovo. Source: Russian social media.
All that is known about the antennas at the Soviet-era KGB sites is from the declassified 1983 CIA report, which gives antenna diameters of 25, 12, and 7 meters. Antennas of those sizes are still seen at the FSB sites today in addition to 16-meter antennas and smaller ones. The 25-meter antennas are at only two sites, namely the ones in the Khabarovsk region and in Crimea. One PhD dissertation that can be linked to the FSB sites mentions antennas named TNA-7, TNA-7M, TNA-9, TNA-12, and TNA-16, with the numbers denoting their diameters. [3]. Antenna names seen in procurement documents related to the FSB sites are Kentavr, Tantal, Persei, Eskort, and Rebus. Among the companies involved in building these antennas are NII Radio, OKB MEI, and NPP ATS.
It is perfectly possible that there is commonality between the hardware used at the GRU and FSB stations. For instance, the 25-meter antenna at the FSB station near Alushta in Crimea is identified in tender documentation as TNA-210-K, indicating it is a further development of the TNA-210 antenna used in the GRU’s Zvezda network. [4] Remarkably, very few of the parabolic antennas seen at the GRU and FSB sites are covered by radomes, which would protect them against harsh climatic conditions and also conceal their orientation. It should be noted that at least some of the antennas seen at these facilities may also provide orthodox satellite communication for their host sites.
Apart from traditional parabolic antennas, a handful of the sites also have so-called multiple beam torus antennas (MBTA). Whereas parabolic antennas can only receive signals from one satellite at a time, MBTAs are capable of simultaneously intercepting signals from multiple satellites. They are seen at the GRU site in Klimovsk, the FSB site in Dubovyy Rynok, and the former KGB site in Dobroaleksandrovka (now owned by Ukraine. A 30-meter MBTA was constructed in Klimovsk around 2005–2006, followed by a somewhat smaller one measuring about 15 meters around 2017 (see the picture heading this article.) A similarly sized antenna appeared at the site in Dubovyy Rynok sometime between 2006 and 2011 and can be seen in the satellite picture of this station in part 1. This may be a multibeam antenna that in some procurement documents is referred to as Veyer (“fan”).
The station in Dobroaleksandrovka sports a massive 80-meter MBTA, the biggest of its kind in the world. Nicknamed “The Comb”, it is believed to have been constructed back in 1987 and must have been one of the crown jewels of the KGB’s satellite eavesdropping network. A smaller 17-meter MBTA was erected by the Ukrainians themselves in 2009–2010. Whether any of these are still intact after a reported Russian strike in March 2024 is unknown.
Multiple beam torus antennas are also present at several of the listening posts operated by America’s National Security Agency outside the US. The first one appeared around 2007, which, remarkably enough, was twenty years after the Russians began using such antennas for this purpose at the site in Dobroaleksandrovka. They can have an arc of view of up to 75 degrees, enabling them to receive satellite transmissions from as many as three dozen geostationary satellites at the same time without degradation in performance. Moreover, a large number of transponders on all of these satellites can be monitored simultaneously. [5] Several patents published by the FSB Academy in recent years describe similar antennas capable of receiving transmissions in the C-, Ku-, and Ka-bands from several satellites, although an exact number is not given. [6]
ground stations
Massive 80-meter MBTA at the site in Dobroaleksandrovka, Ukraine (photo taken in 2008). Source
Articles that are almost certainly related to the FSB’s satellite interception stations provide some insight into the challenges they face when observing satellites in geostationary orbit. Geostationary satellites appear relatively low in the sky from Russian territory, especially from locations in the north of the country. Since the antennas must be pointed close to the horizon, they are more susceptible to background interference. Some of the papers discuss ways of improving their signal-to-noise ratio to overcome that problem. One experiment conducted as part of this research involved picking up signals from a radio beacon installed aboard Intelsat 10-02. [7] Other FSB research conducted early last decade focused on techniques to pick up signals with frequencies up to three gigahertz from geostationary satellites that are on the edge of visibility from Russian territory. [8]
Ð key question is what satellites the eavesdropping stations are looking at and what kind of information the Russians are trying to extract from them.
A strange feature is seen at the GRU sites in Maksimovshchina and Kaliningrad. It consists of what looks like a radome surrounded by five identical structures. At the location in Maksimovshchina, the construction first shows up in Google Earth imagery from September 2016, with no sign of it in the preceding imagery from June 2015. In Kaliningrad, the building process was much slower. The five “petals” appeared first in April 2014, followed only four years later by the central structure. These features so far defy explanation. They may have nothing to do with satellite intelligence.
ground stations
Unexplained feature at GRU site 25137 in Kaliningrad. Source: Google Earth.
Target satellites
Ð key question is what satellites the eavesdropping stations are looking at and what kind of information the Russians are trying to extract from them. All that can be learned from Russian sources are some details on the targets of the GRU’s Zvezda network in the Soviet days.
A GRU officer who served at Zvezda unit 51430 near Yakovlevka in Russia’s Far East in the late 1970s and early 1980s described the functions of the three originally built antennas there as follows:
TNA-400: intercepting signals of Intelsat IV communications satellites at frequencies up to 4200 megahertz
TNA-110: intercepting signals of US military communications satellites at frequencies up to 7800 megahertz
TNA-97: intercepting signals of foreign reconnaissance satellites at frequencies up to 2500 megahertz [9]
This is more or less consistent with what one other veteran has written about the functions of the three antennas. According to him, one was needed to “gather information about the on-board equipment of detected satellites,” by which he probably referred to efforts to learn more about the design and functioning of reconnaissance satellites through analysis of intercepted signals. The other two, in his words, were used “in the interests of the GRU and the KGB,” by which he presumably meant interception of voice traffic from both military and civilian communications satellites. [10] In other words, the original objectives of Zvezda were both to collect information about foreign satellites, which falls under the domain of electronic intelligence or ELINT, and from foreign satellites, which belongs to the field of communications intelligence or COMINT. (SIGINT is an umbrella term for the two.)
ELINT of foreign satellites would have been needed to fulfill what seems to have been a key initial objective of Zvezda, namely, to identify potential targets for anti-satellite attacks (see part 1.) The question is what those targets could have been. The demonstrated ceiling of the Soviet “IS” interceptor satellites was about 1,000 kilometers, so any targets would have been restricted to orbits lower than that. The most obvious ones were photographic reconnaissance satellites, but these are not known to have communicated with any ground stations in the vicinity of the Soviet Union.
One piece of information indicates that a possible target for Zvezda were US signals intelligence satellites in geostationary orbit. According to one source, one of the original functions of the Zvezda site near Ventspils in Latvia was to pick up signals downlinked by US satellites to ground stations in England. [11] This must have been a reference to Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, a major US signals intelligence base used not only to intercept traffic from foreign communications satellites, but also to control US signals intelligence satellites in geostationary orbit. The TNA-97 antenna said to have been used for ELINT of reconnaissance satellites was not only in Yakovlevka, but in Ventspils as well. Its frequency range (“up to 2500 megahertz”) suggests it could only have picked up telemetry from these satellites, which is typically transmitted at such low frequencies. The intelligence information itself was reportedly sent to Earth with a narrow-beam antenna at a frequency of 24 gigahertz (which corresponds to 24,000 megahertz.) [12]
All indications are that the primary objective of the eavesdropping stations was to collect COMINT.
As far as is known, Menwith Hill began to be used as a control station for SIGINT satellites with the introduction of the CHALET COMINT satellites in 1978. It is possible, however, that Ventspils also monitored the preceding series of geostationary SIGINT satellites. Called CANYON, these were launched between 1968 and 1977 and controlled from a station in Bad Aibling in West Germany, which was significantly closer to Ventspils than Menwith Hill. It is not clear which reconnaissance satellites the station in Yakovlevka could have been eavesdropping on. Situated not far from the USSR’s Pacific coast, it was nowhere near any ground stations for US reconnaissance satellites. Of course, geostationary SIGINT satellites were way out of reach of the Soviet Union’s interceptor satellites. Based on the available information, one can only assume that Zvezda’s original goal of identifying ASAT targets soon receded into the background.
All indications are that the primary objective of the eavesdropping stations was to collect COMINT. For the KGB, that must have been the sole goal from the very outset since it would have had no interest in ELINT of military satellites. Intelsat satellites can be positively identified as Soviet-era targets not only for the Zvezda station near Yakovlevka, but also for the one near Ventspils. [13] The interest in these satellites is not surprising. Having debuted in 1965, they were the only international telecommunications satellites until the early 1980s and were responsible for the vast majority of communications traffic between countries and continents. In addition to civilian traffic, they also carried diplomatic and government communications, which would have been of particular interest to intelligence agencies. The foundation of Intelsat in 1964 was one of the main driving forces behind the creation of the US National Security Agency’s network of COMINT stations and this may well have been the case for its Soviet equivalent as well.
By the time the Soviet listening posts became operational in the 1970s, Intelsat satellites provided global coverage. The Intelsat IV and IVA series launched during that decade had so-called “global beams” that covered the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean areas as well as “zone beams” that covered smaller areas, more particularly the eastern US, the western US, western Europe, and eastern Asia. As can be seen on the map below, the NSA needed only four COMINT stations to monitor all those beams. [14]
ground stations
NSA coverage of Intelsat global and zone beams in the 1970s. Source
Since the global beams overlapped each other over the Soviet Union, they could all be seen by the Soviet network, which stretched all the way from the country’s western to its eastern borders. The zone beams covering western Europe and eastern Asia were visible from stations in the western and eastern parts of the Soviet Union. Additional coverage of the East Asia beam may have been provided by the GRU Zvezda stations in Vietnam and Burma. The zone beam covering the western US was possibly just within range of the station in Lourdes, Cuba, but the one covering the eastern US was out of sight. The situation became much more complex in the 1980s and later with the emergence of new international satellite operators such as Eutelsat and Inmarsat and the increased use of narrow spot beams, many of which did not spill over into Soviet territory.
The Intelsat IV and IVA satellites operated in C-band with downlink frequencies between 3700 and 4200 megahertz. The low power of C-band transmissions initially required the use of big parabolic antennas like the 32-meter TNA-400 near Ventspils and Yakovlevka. Later, as technology evolved, such signals could also be received by antennas smaller than 10 meters. Such antennas were also sufficient to pick up higher frequency signals in the Ku-band, which gained popularity in the 1980s.
The claim that the Zvezda network was also intended to monitor military communications satellites is corroborated by one account of its use to intercept signals from the second-generation satellites of the US Defense Support Communications System (DSCS II). These began flying in 1971 and downlinked signals in the X-band. The reported frequency range of the 16-meter TNA-110 antenna (up to 7800 megahertz) was indeed in the lower part of that band. When Soviet intelligence officials became aware of plans to launch the DSCS II satellites, they tasked specialists of the TsNII-18 military research institute with designing a so-called low-noise amplifier that could be used to receive signals from DSCS II satellites parked over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The device was installed at the Zvezda station in Chabanka (Ukraine), which only had a 12-meter diameter dish antenna, not the 16-meter TNA-110. According to the account, it took nearly a week to detect the first signals from a DSCS II satellite because neither the exact location of the satellite nor its precise downlink frequencies were known. The intercepted data reportedly included critical information on the activities of the US State Department and the US Strategic Air Command. [15] The veteran of the Zvezda unit near Yakovlevka recounts how his team monitored joint military exercises staged by the US, Japan, and South Korea in the Pacific. This may also have been done by listening in on US military communications satellites.
The few declassified CIA documents that deal with the Soviet stations reveal very little about what US intelligence knew about their target satellites. They mention only communications intelligence, with one report in 1982 specifically singling out monitoring of the Intelsat network by both the KGB and GRU. Another report, released in 1977, stated that the facility near Ventspils was responsible for “intercept of US space vehicles [including Skylab].” [16] One other sign that the stations may also have monitored American piloted space missions comes from the memoirs of the Yakovlevka veteran, who writes that his team kept track of the first flight of the Space Shuttle in April 1981. It is not clear what kind of information the Russians may have been trying to gather by doing so, although there may have been particular interest in the dedicated military Shuttle missions that were later flown.
COMINT seems to have been the sole goal from the outset of the equivalent program run by America’s National Security Agency. As became known from documents leaked last decade by Edward Snowden, the NSA program, which had the umbrella name FROSTING, was set up in 1966, the same year that the GRU’s Zvezda program officially got underway. It consisted of two sub-programs. One, named TRANSIENT, targeted Soviet satellites, mainly Molniya communications satellites, which were used for both government and military communications. The other, called ECHELON, was intended to covertly intercept transmissions from Intelsat satellites. The two parallel operations were later merged into a global system called FORNSAT (foreign satellite intelligence).
ECHELON’s main goal was to eavesdrop on non-military targets such as governments, organizations, businesses, and private persons in virtually every country of the world, including US allies. Rather than snooping on specific individuals, ECHELON worked by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communication and then siphoning out whatever was valuable with the help of computer algorithms. This mode of operation, called “Collect-it-all,” was later facilitated by the introduction of multiple beam torus antennas, which can simultaneously monitor signals from several dozen satellites. An important reason for the NSA to introduce such antennas was to increase access to global Internet traffic carried by satellite. [17]
There was little cooperation between them in their respective SIGINT endeavors and that division-of-labor agreements were not always respected. For instance, it was not uncommon for both the KGB and GRU to operate clandestine intelligence radio intercept stations inside the same Russian embassies around the world.
There is no publicly available information on the satellites that the GRU and FSB stations are monitoring these days. The GRU may continue to have an interest in reconnaissance satellites since the TNA-97 antennas used for that purpose in the 1970s (or modifications thereof) still seem to be in use. The NSA base in Menwith Hill, England, still serves as a control center for US geostationary SIGINT satellites, but there is no way of telling if those are still a target for the Russian listening stations. As for military communications satellites, the advancement of data encryption techniques must have gradually made the interception of data from such satellites much more difficult. The primary focus is most likely on the vast array of commercial communications satellites that now populate the geostationary belt. Whether the Russians also use the “Collect-it-all” technique is open to speculation. While a handful of the stations have multibeam torus antennas, the computer technology needed to process the data may not be as advanced as that used by the NSA.
By looking at antenna orientations in the Google Earth imagery, it is possible to determine that the Russian network covers a part of the geostationary belt stretching from roughly 180°E to 20°W, which is just about all that can be seen from Russian territory. By contrast, the network that the NSA operates jointly with international partners is spread across the world, both in the northern and southern hemispheres, and offers global coverage. Research carried out in 2015 showed that at the time it consisted of 14 stations and a total of about 232 antennas. [18] Russia’s gap in coverage may at least partially be compensated by the interception of satellite data with parabolic antennas mounted on rooftops of embassies. These are seen on Russian embassies around the world and at least some of them may be used to collect COMINT from satellites.
Using an app called dishpointer (intended to align home satellite dishes), one can get a rough idea of the kind of satellites that the antennas at the GRU and FSB sites are pointing at. There appears to be a continued interest in Intelsat satellites, with other popular targets being satellites operated by Eutelsat and Inmarsat. One report in 2008 singled out the Inmarsat 4-F2 satellite as a likely target of observation for the FSB station (nr. 49911) in the Pskov region near Estonia. [19] That satellite has since been relocated to a new spot that puts it out of reach of this station, but judging from antenna orientations, a new target for the station may be Inmarsat-GX5 at 11.0°E, whose footprint reaches just across Estonia’s border with Russia. Stations in central and eastern Russia seem to have some of their antennas pointed at satellites owned by Chinese operators.
One other question to be addressed is why it was decided to have two independent networks run by the GRU and KGB/FSB. Many of the stations were and still are in the same general area and, consequently, in the same satellite footprints. A case in point are the now decommissioned stations that both intelligence agencies had in Georgia (nr. 51868 and 61615), which were barely six kilometers apart.
Considering their background, it would be logical to assume that the GRU has focused exclusively on military satellites and the KGB/FSB on government/commercial satellites. However, things are probably not as straightforward as that. As pointed out in one history of Soviet SIGINT activities, the historically rooted inter-service rivalry between the two organizations meant that there was little cooperation between them in their respective SIGINT endeavors and that division-of-labor agreements were not always respected. For instance, it was not uncommon for both the KGB and GRU to operate clandestine intelligence radio intercept stations inside the same Russian embassies around the world which often monitored the same targets without any coordination of effort whatsoever. [20] Similarly, there may be at least some overlap in the targets observed by the satellite COMINT stations, however wasteful that may seem to be.
The FSB also appears to operate a space-based COMINT collection system that is most likely seen as an extension of its ground-based network. It consists of two satellites, launched under the official names Luch and Luch-5X in September 2014 and March 2023, respectively. They have since been traveling across the geostationary belt, regularly parking themselves close to foreign government and commercial communications satellites, with satellites operated by Intelsat and Eutelsat also being prime targets. The two satellites, which are internally named Olimp and Yenisei-2, were discussed in detail in an earlier article here, which provided evidence that they are operated by the FSB’s 16th Center. [21] One or more payloads of the satellites are provided by a company named NII Radio, which has close ties with the 16th Center and also manufactures some of the antennas used in the FSB’s ground-based COMINT network. It is very well possible that the data intercepted by these satellites are sent to one or more of the FSB’s COMINT collection sites on Russian territory. Likewise, the data obtained by the equivalent American PAN and NEMESIS satellites are downlinked to the US SIGINT base in Menwith Hill in England.
ground stations
A drawing possibly showing the Luch/Olimp eavesdropping satellite. Source: ISS Reshetnev.
Luch/Olimp has been parked close to Intelsat-37E since the summer of 2022, a possible sign that it is running low on propellant. The newer satellite, Luch-5X/Yenisei-2, is still very active, relocating itself to a new target satellite every few months. In April to June last year it loitered right next to Astra A4, a satellite belonging to Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES that relays a number of Ukrainian TV channels. Some of those were jammed shortly before and after Luch-5X’s arrival, but all indications are that the jamming was caused by ground-based emitters on Russian territory and not the Luch-5X satellite itself. Other Western communications satellites have also fallen victim to such electronic attacks without any of the Luch satellites being in the neighborhood. (For completeness’ sake, it should be added that there have also been reports of Russian satellite-relayed broadcasts being jammed by Ukraine.)
Unlike the ground-based COMINT collection stations, which can receive only downlink, the Luch satellites should be capable of intercepting signals uplinked to target satellites. This has several possible advantages. It would enable them to geolocate transmitters as well as chart uplink frequencies, which in turn could help jam some of the transponders. Besides that, they should be capable of monitoring traffic that cannot be picked up by the ground stations. Only some of the downlink beams of the target satellites are visible from Russian territory. Instead of employing wide beams, modern high-throughput communications satellites utilize multiple spot beams to cover relatively small service areas. There is evidence that at least one payload aboard Luch-5X is designed to pick up such narrow beams at Ka-band frequencies and then convert them to L-band for downlink to ground stations.
ground stations
Luch-5X (named Luch/Olymp 2 here) parked next to Astra A4 in April 2024. Source
New efforts to collect ELINT on foreign satellites
While the GRU and FSB stations are mainly or exclusively aimed at collecting COMINT, several new systems have been introduced in recent years to gather electronic intelligence on foreign satellites. These are not operated by the intelligence services. Instead, they have been developed as part of Russia’s space surveillance network, which keeps a constant eye on events in Earth orbit. It has independent military and civilian components (the Ministry of Defense’s SKKP network and Roscosmos’ ASPOS OKP network) and consists primarily of radars operated solely by the military and optical telescopes operated by both the military and Roscosmos. However, unlike space surveillance systems of other nations, it also includes several ELINT systems.
Part of SKKP are systems named Moment and Sledopyt (“pathfinder”), which are described in official documents as being used for “monitoring radio emitting satellites.” Moment comprises a single facility near SKKP’s headquarters in Noginsk-9 (some 60 kilometers northeast of Moscow) and Sledopyt numbers four sites (in Noginsk-9, the Kaliningrad region, Siberia, and the Far East, the final one still being under construction.) Based on available information, Moment and Sledopyt are probably designed to learn more about the purpose and design of foreign satellites through analysis of intercepted signals. They can also assist in tracking satellites in daylight, if they are obscured from view by clouds at night or if they orbit too high to be detected by radars. Moment has been operational since about the turn of the century. Sledopyt, assigned to NII Radio back in 2009, has clearly suffered many delays and looks like it has been scaled down. [22]
The locations in Mexico and Cuba would possibly enable KRTM to intercept telemetry from rockets launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida respectively.
In 2019, the Ministry of Defense ordered another company, PAO Radiofizika, to build a system called KRTM (“Complex for Radio-Technical Monitoring”). According to procurement documentation, its goal is to monitor telemetry from rockets and satellites at altitudes from 80 to 70,000 kilometers and between frequencies of 2.2 and 2.4 gigahertz. It is based on a system named Telemetr that PAO Radiofizika developed earlier to pick up telemetry from launches of US intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The plan was for KRTM to be co-deployed with a set of telescopes of Roscosmos’ ASPOS OKP network and for the two to work together as a so-called Integrated Observation Complex (OKN). OKN would first be installed at a temporary location in Russia (apparently for testing) before being moved to the Guillermo Haro Observatory in northwestern Mexico or to an unspecified place in Cuba, giving it access to objects that are impossible or more difficult to spot from Russian territory.
As can be seen in Google Earth imagery, OKN was deployed in a mountainous region near the village of Doliny, some 70 kilometers north of Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East. It featured several telescopes as well as a white building with a rounded roof that may have acted as a protective enclosure for the KRTM system. The latest imagery from June 2024 shows that the enclosure and some of the telescopes have been dismantled, a possible sign they have been or are being moved to one of the two locations abroad, with Cuba being a more likely candidate given the current geopolitical situation. The locations in Mexico and Cuba would possibly enable KRTM to intercept telemetry from rockets launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida respectively. It is worth noting that the site near Doliny is right under the flight path of some rockets launched from Baikonur and Plesetsk. These may have served as targets for telemetry intercepts by the KRTM system. [23]
ground stations
The OKN site near Doliny in Russia’s Far East in May 2023. Source: Google Earth.
Finally, another space-related ELINT project was initiated by the Ministry of Defense in 2020 under the name Nast-R and assigned to MAK Vympel. It has been described in court documentation as “a network of assets to monitor space-based radar systems”. MAK Vympel has published several technical articles that are probably related to Nast-R. They mention a radar monitoring system that would make it possible to determine the carrier frequency, bandwidth, modulation type, pulse repetition frequency and the polarization of satellite radar signals and also to estimate the satellite’s ground swath.
One of MAK Vympel’s subcontractors for Nast-R (NII STT) has done research on electronic countermeasures against radar satellites, more particularly on a method called radar deception, which involves confusing enemy radars by generating false targets. This raises the possibility that Nast-R is intended to provide data for electronic warfare against radar reconnaissance satellites flying over Russian territory, preventing them from imaging targets of interest. It is not known if any elements of Nast-R have been deployed yet, but there are indications that it uses relatively simple off-the-shelf technology and that MAK Vympel has supplied similar radar monitoring systems to a foreign customer. [24]
References
Some details on the Soviet-era GRU antennas are given by the sources summed up in reference 1 in part 1 of this article as well as in a history of the OKB MEI design bureau that is no longer online.
Article by specialists of RNIIRS published in 2015.
Summary of PhD dissertation published in 2020. The full version is no longer online. It refers to the Rebus-2T antenna (built for the FSB by NII Radio) and was supervised by professor Anatoliy Somov, who can be linked to the FSB Academy.
Tender documentation published in May 2019.
D. Ball et al, Expanded communications satellite surveillance and intelligence activities utilising multi-beam antenna systems, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, 2015.
Four such patents were published by the FSB Academy in 2022 (1, 2, 3, 4).
See reference 3.
Two patents published in 2012 (1, 2). These are owned by the NII Radio company, but one of the patent holders is the FSB Academy’s Anatoliy Somov.
Memoirs of GRU veteran Oleg Krivopalov, 2011, p. 381–382.
Memoirs of SNII 45 veteran Aleksandr Gorelik, p. 375. Although not mentioned by Gorelik, ELINT of US reconnaissance satellites was most likely also in the interests of the GRU.
See reference 10.
The 24 GHz frequency is given in: Report on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system), European Parliament, 2001, p. 35.
Recollections of a veteran of the Zvezda unit near Ventspils, 2021.
See reference 12.
History of the GRU’s SIGINT activities by Mikhail Boltunov, 2011, p. 158-159.
The technology acquisition efforts of the Soviet intelligence services, CIA report, June 1982, p. 21; Similarity between electronics facilities at Lourdes, Cuba, and Vicak, USSR, CIA report, October 1977, p. 1.
Article on the website of investigative journalist Duncan Campbell ; Reference 5.
See reference 5.
Snooping on Russia’s secret satellite snoopers, Politico, April 9, 2008.
M. Aid, Eavesdroppers of the Kremlin: KGB SIGINT during the Cold War, chapter published in: K. De Leeuw, J. Bergstra, The history of information security, 2007.
B. Hendrickx, Olimp and Yenisei-2: Russia’s secretive eavesdropping satellites, part 1 (November 20, 2023), part 2 (November 27, 2023).
B. Hendrickx, Russia gears up for electronic warfare in space (part 2), The Space Review, November 2, 2020 ; Sledopyt thread on the NASA Spaceflight Forum.
Thread on the Russian space surveillance network on the NASA Spaceflight Forum, Reply 8. The latest Google Earth imagery of the OKN site is here.
Thread on the Russian space surveillance network on the NASA Spaceflight Forum, Replies 4 and 5.
The author appreciates the help of Dwayne A. Day.
Bart Hendrickx is a longtime observer of the Russian space program.
Titan Spinner
Titan spinner
This unidentified satellite mockup has sat outside an aviation museum in the city of Santa Maria, California, for many years. It is a boilerplate/mockup of a FARRAH signals intelligence satellite, first launched in 1988. Three were built and launched on Titan II rockets from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The satellites collected signals from radar systems. (credit: D. Day)
Titan’s spinners: the FARRAH satellites
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, January 27, 2025
Behind an industrial building on the edge of the small airport of the modest city of Santa Maria, California, sits an oddly-shaped black-painted object, about three meters high and two meters in diameter. It is not labeled, but at one time it went by the nickname “Pathfinder.” It is leftover equipment from the Cold War, and a case of a secret program hiding in plain sight.
The object sits next to a piece of a Titan II rocket, which provides a clue about its provenance. The object is a crude mockup of a late 1980s Program 989 signals intelligence satellite codenamed FARRAH, designed to collect Soviet radar signals and relay their identity and location to ground stations, including US Army units deployed around the world. It has been sitting outside in the weather for decades, with perhaps only a handful of visitors ever knowing its actual purpose. No photos of the actual satellite have been released, but now a drawing of the satellite has also been declassified, and it looks like the object in Santa Maria.
spinner
Two versions of the FARRAH signals intelligence satellites from a recently declassified document. The rectangular satellite was about the size of a large suitcase. Several were launched in the early 1980s from the sides of HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellites. The "tuna can" shape was a later version. It was originally designed to be launched from the Space Shuttle, but was later diverted to launch on refurbished Titan II ICBMs. (credit: NRO)
Hitchhikers
Starting in the early 1960s, the United States Air Force began tossing small satellites off the sides of rockets launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The satellites were about the size and shape of a large suitcase, and one of them was given the nickname “Hitchhiker.” They were built by Lockheed, which designated them Program 11, or P-11 for short. After being pushed off the back of an American photo-reconnaissance satellite, the satellites started spinning and fired a small rocket motor that boosted them to a higher orbit. As they spun, they deployed an array of antennas that swept over the face of the Earth as the satellites orbited the poles.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the satellites were deployed rarely, initially only a few times a year, then by the 1970s once every other year or so. By then they were designated Program 989 satellites, and by the later 1970s, the satellites had been given the codename FARRAH, after actress Farrah Fawcett.
Their antennas were designed to detect various emitters on the ground, depending upon the mission. Their primary targets were radars inside the Soviet Union, initially air search radars of the type used to detect enemy (in the Soviet case, that meant American) aircraft. But soon the satellites were adapted to detect more elusive and enigmatic emitters, such as the giant radars, hundreds of meters long, used to track American ballistic missiles so that they could be intercepted, or to detect American satellites in orbit. They would record signals while over the Soviet Union, then play them back over a ground station within the United States (see “Big bird, little bird: chasing Soviet anti-ballistic missile radars in the 1960s,” The Space Review, December 14, 2020.)
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the satellites were deployed rarely, initially only a few times a year, then by the 1970s once every other year or so. By then they were designated Program 989 satellites, and by the later 1970s, the satellites had been given the codename FARRAH, after actress Farrah Fawcett (see “FARRAH, the superstar satellite,” The Space Review, April 15, 2024.) Whereas they had initially been developed to serve strategic needs, providing data that was used to design weapons systems and to defend strategic bombers like the B-52 Stratofortress, by the late 1970s the satellites were beginning to serve tactical users, like deployed Army and Air Force units in Europe and Korea (see “Little Wizards: Signals intelligence satellites during the Cold War,” The Space Review, August 2, 2021, and “From the sky to the mud: TENCAP and adapting national reconnaissance systems to tactical operations,” The Space Review, June 19, 2023.) As computing power increased, it became possible to process the satellite data in near-real-time rather than weeks or months, and thus an Army operator sitting at a terminal could very quickly gather data about the dispersal of mobile radar units inside Warsaw Pact nations.
spinner
The decommissioning of Titan II ICBMs in the 1980s made them available as satellite launchers. Here a Titan II is poised to launch the first of the late model FARRAH signals intelligence satellites. Three FARRAHs were launched on Titan IIs. The rockets were also used to launch other payloads, such as meteorological satellites. (credit: Peter Hunter Collection)
Enter the shuttle
By the late 1970s, the National Reconnaissance Office, which managed the US fleet of intelligence collecting satellites, was moving many of its satellites from expendable launch vehicles to the Space Shuttle. Many of the details of these transfers remain classified, although declassified interviews and an official history indicate that there was a debate within the NRO about whether to simply move existing spacecraft onto the new launch vehicle with minimal modification, or to redesign them to take advantage of the shuttle’s greater capabilities, such as making the satellites larger, or even designing them to be serviced in space, like the Hubble Space Telescope.
According to the person who was in charge of Program 989 in the early 1980s, the NRO made two decisions regarding the satellites. The first was to make them significantly larger than their suitcase-sized predecessors, changing the shape from a rectangle to a spinning “tuna can” with multiple antennas that would be deployed from its top. The second was to co-manifest them with a Navy ocean surveillance satellite on shuttle flights, presumably because they would launch to similar orbits from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (see “Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle,” The Space Review, Monday, November 7, 2022.)
The co-manifesting decision presented a dilemma: the shuttle did not then have sufficient payload capability to carry both payloads without significant upgrades, including a new lightweight external tank and lightweight solid rocket boosters (SRBs) made of a carbon filament. Those upgrades would have to be funded and then successfully implemented. That was going to take time and money.
At some point the program office decided to procure a mockup of the satellite for handling tests at the launch site. No information is public about when or how this decision was made, but crude mockups—often referred to as boilerplates—have existed throughout the history of the space program .
Program manager Jon Bryson knew that if push came to shove, his Program 989 satellites would be removed from the shuttle before the Navy satellites. He needed another way to get them to orbit. Soon he found another option. The Air Force was withdrawing dozens of Titan II ICBMs from silos around the country, which could be converted into launch vehicles. There was already a plan to move the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites from the shuttle to the Titan II, and adding the Program 989 satellites improved the justification for converting the ICBMs.
Once the decision was made to switch the satellites to the Titan II, the Titan II program office became involved and many decisions had to be made on how to handle the satellites at the launch site and put them atop the launch vehicle. At some point the program office decided to procure a mockup of the satellite for handling tests at the launch site. No information is public about when or how this decision was made, but crude mockups—often referred to as boilerplates—have existed throughout the history of the space program to serve a variety of ground handling requirements. During the Apollo program, Apollo Command Module boilerplates were used for training rescue swimmers to attach the flotation collar in the ocean, aircraft carrier crews to lift them out of the water, and ground crews to move the spacecraft inside the assembly building.
The first of the larger Program 989 satellites was stacked atop its Titan II launch vehicle and launched from Vandenberg on September 5, 1988. At the time this was the first use of a new rocket for a classified payload and it confused independent observers who nevertheless managed to track the spinning satellite in its low Earth orbit. Observers guessed at its mission, and some got it right whereas others did not.
Almost exactly one year later, on September 6, 1989, a second Titan II launched from Vandenberg carrying the second satellite into orbit. But this proved to be an eventful mission. The satellite separated from the rocket but then failed to turn on. Ground controllers sent multiple commands to it, but it never activated. According to somebody involved in the program, the failure was ultimately traced to the safety system originally incorporated for shuttle launch. That system kept the satellite electronically dormant while in the shuttle’s payload bay and turned it on after it was deployed. But a mistake failed to account for the switch to the Titan II, and the satellite never activated as it should have after deployment.
On April 25, 1992, a third satellite was launched atop a Titan II. This one apparently operated successfully. There were rumors that three additional Titan IIs were allocated to classified launches that were later canceled, but there is no way to confirm this. At some point the pathfinder vehicle was declared as unneeded equipment and was donated to the Santa Maria Museum of Flight. It sat there for decades, without a label, and almost nobody knowing what it was for until now.
Dwayne Day is interested in hearing from anybody with more information on the pathfinder mockup or the FARRAH satellites. He can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.
Phasing Out The SLS Booster and Orion Capsule
SLS and Starship
Space Launch System with Orion (left) and Starship. (credit: NASA/SpaceX)
Phasing out the SLS and Orion programs and embracing Starship
by Gerald Black
Monday, January 27, 2025
Two space transportation systems are being developed for human exploration of the Moon and Mars. The Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft comprise the first transportation system, while the second transportation system consists of SpaceX’s Starship. The NASA plan is to use both space transportation systems to return humans to the lunar surface. This feat would be accomplished with the Artemis 3 mission, currently scheduled for mid-2027.
The simple solution for Artemis 4 and subsequent Artemis missions is to go back to the original SpaceX plan that uses only the Starship.
But using two different transportation systems for Artemis missions adds complexity and increases the cost so much that the whole program would not be sustainable. This is because the SLS and Orion are not only less capable than the Starship, but they increase the cost of each Artemis mission by roughly a factor of ten. The capabilities and cost of the two different transportation systems are discussed below.
This paper proposes a plan for transitioning from using both transportation systems for Artemis missions to using only the Starship. All SLS and Orion work related to Artemis 4 and beyond would end immediately, including the SLS Block 1B upgrade, the SLS Block 2 upgrade, and the second mobile launch platform. The Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions would proceed as planned, but then the SLS and Orion programs would end with the Artemis 3 mission.
The SLS and Orion hardware components for the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions have been completed or are nearing completion. The European Space Agency has already completed and delivered to NASA the European Service Modules for the Orion spacecraft for both the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions. If we do not fly these missions, we would be seen as an unreliable international partner. Flying these two missions will help ensure that we return astronauts to the lunar surface quickly and before China does. It will also be easier to persuade Congress to phase out the SLS and Orion programs than to cancel them outright.
SpaceX already has a perfectly good plan for returning humans to the lunar surface using only Starship. This is the original SpaceX plan that Elon Musk revealed at the International Astronautical Congress in 2017. But instead, we ended up with the NASA plan that uses both space transportation systems. This essay covers both the original SpaceX plan and the NASA plan and explain how we ended up with the NASA plan. The simple solution for Artemis 4 and subsequent Artemis missions is to go back to the original SpaceX plan that uses only the Starship.
Getting to our goal of using only the Starship for missions after Artemis 3 will require adding capabilities to the Starship beyond what is required for the Artemis 3 mission. These additional capabilities will be discussed. Flying the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions as planned will allow ample time for SpaceX to implement the additional capabilities needed for Artemis 4 and subsequent missions.
Comparing the capabilities and cost of the SLS and Orion with the Starship
Starship is more powerful and can launch significantly heavier payloads than the SLS. It is fully reusable, whereas the SLS is fully expendable. Yet another advantage is that Starship has a significantly higher launch frequency than the SLS. Unlike the SLS and Orion, Starship can land on the Moon and Mars.
The Orion spacecraft is a lot less capable than it should be. The spacecraft and its abort system are overweight compared to newer, more efficient designs. Orion’s service module propulsion system is underpowered. Also, Orion lands in the ocean, requiring additional expense for recovery operations.
There is a huge difference in the operational cost of SLS and Orion versus Starship. According to a report by the NASA Inspector General, the SLS cost is at least $4.2 billion per launch for the first four Artemis missions. Adding in $1 billion for the Orion spacecraft brings the cost of SLS and Orion to $5.2 billion per launch.
By contrast, Elon Musk has said a Starship launch will eventually cost $10 million or less, and in the very long term as little as $2 to $3 million per launch. Musk hasn’t stated what price SpaceX will charge for a Starship launch once they start making launches for customers, but a reasonable guess is $40 million. That means a staggering 130 Starship launches can be made for the same cost as one launch of the SLS and Orion!
It seemed evident that NASA did not want a more capable HLS that could also return directly to the Earth, since that would threaten the SLS and Orion programs, and thus be unable to receive Congressional funding.
Each Artemis lunar mission may require a dozen or more Starship launches due to the need for orbital refueling. If we assume that it will take 15 Starships at $40 million apiece for each Artemis mission, that brings the Starship cost to $600 million per Artemis mission. The cost ratio of using both transportation systems versus using only the Starship is (5200+600)/600 = 9.7. So, using both transportation systems instead of just the Starship increases the cost by roughly a factor of ten.
SpaceX’s original plan for returning humans to the Moon
Before the Artemis program was started, SpaceX had a plan for using the Starship to transport astronauts from Earth’s surface to the lunar surface and back. This plan was revealed by Elon Musk at the International Astronautical Congress in 2017. This original SpaceX plan did not use the SLS or Orion, only what is now known as Starship.
The original SpaceX plan was advertised as being able to land 100 people or 100 tons of cargo on the Moon. This far exceeds the NASA requirement for the Artemis missions. It is also a lot simpler than the NASA plan. Only one crewed vehicle is needed, and the need to rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit has been eliminated.
SpaceX’s original plan included refueling the crewed Starship in an elliptical Earth orbit, then travelling to the Moon and landing on the lunar surface. The astronauts would return from the Moon in the Starship, reenter Earth’s atmosphere, and land back on Earth. Starship was equipped with fins and a heat shield needed for the return to Earth.
The plan is illustrated in the following figures provided by SpaceX.
Starship plan
Starship lunar mission architecture. (credit: SpaceX)
Starship moon
Starship, with a lunar base in the background. (credit: SpaceX)
NASA’s plan for returning humans to the Moon
In March of 2019, the first Trump administration announced the goal of returning American astronauts to the Moon by 2024, touching off the Artemis program. NASA responded with the plan to use the SLS and Orion to transport astronauts from Earth to lunar orbit, and from lunar orbit back to Earth. To transport astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface and back to lunar orbit, NASA held a competition for a “Human Landing System” (HLS). Several companies and teams of companies entered the competition.
SpaceX proposed the Starship as their entry in the HLS competition, but with a twist. In a major change from SpaceX’s original plan, SpaceX dropped the fins and the heat shield from their proposal, thus removing Starship’s ability to reenter and land back on the Earth. It appears that this was nothing other than a ploy to help SpaceX win the contract. It seemed evident that NASA did not want a more capable HLS that could also return directly to the Earth, since that would threaten the SLS and Orion programs, and thus be unable to receive Congressional funding.
SpaceX won the HLS competition in April of 2021 and was awarded a fixed price contract for $2.89 billion dollars to develop the HLS version of the Starship. This was a significantly lower price than was offered by the other competitors. The following figure shows the HLS version of the Starship on the lunar surface.
Starship moon
Human Landing System version of the Starship on the lunar surface. (credit: SpaceX)
Transitioning to Starship-only Artemis missions
To eliminate the need for the SLS and Orion for Artemis missions, we simply need to transition from the NASA plan back to the original SpaceX plan. The primary change needed is to add the fins and the heat shield back onto the Starship that does the lunar landings, enabling the Starship to return the astronauts back to Earth.
Consideration should be given to adding the fins and the heat shield back on the Starship lunar lander as soon as the Artemis 3 mission. While the Artemis 3 astronauts would return to Earth in the Orion spacecraft, this would provide an opportunity to try returning the Starship uncrewed directly to Earth. It would also provide an extra measure of safety in case of a major failure of the Orion spacecraft, something like what happened on the Apollo 13 mission. Then the Starship could provide a backup means of getting the astronauts back alive.
Two of the most challenging and dangerous parts of an Artemis mission are the launch to Earth orbit and Earth reentry and landing following the return from the Moon. For the Artemis 3 mission, the SLS and Orion will perform these functions. These are important capabilities that must be added to the Starship for missions following the Artemis 3 missions. We’ll discuss each of these in turn.
Launching astronauts to Earth orbit on the Starship
The SLS and Orion have a proven launch abort system with its own motor to power the crew capsule away in case of a failure. Starship does not. Starship will have some launch abort capability, though not nearly as robust as for the SLS and Orion.
The Starship must demonstrate very high reliability to compensate for lack of launch abort robustness. NASA might require something like 100 consecutive successful launches before allowing NASA astronauts to launch on Starship.
Starship may or may not be sufficiently reliable to launch astronauts into Earth orbit by the time of the Artemis 4 flight, which is scheduled for September of 2028. But if not, the Falcon 9 could launch the astronauts into Earth orbit aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft. Once in Earth orbit, the Crew Dragon would rendezvous and dock with the Starship that was launched separately without crew. The astronauts would then transfer to the Starship and the Crew Dragon would depart. The Starship would then continue with its mission just as if the astronauts had launched aboard Starship.
Returning the Starship from the Moon to Earth
Starship has already demonstrated the capability of returning from orbit to a pinpoint soft landing in the ocean. Returning from the Moon generates more heat than returning from Earth orbit. However, SpaceX has been designing the Starship heat shield with return from the Moon and Mars in mind. Laboratory testing has shown that the thermal protection system tiles that comprise Starship’s heat shield can withstand the higher temperatures generated by return from the Moon.
The Artemis 4 mission is currently scheduled for September of 2028, but realistically won’t occur until at least 2029. That will allow ample time for SpaceX to develop the capability to return from the Moon directly to Earth.
We need to end expensive programs that have questionable value, such as the SLS and Orion. Instead, we need to substitute programs that will inspire the next generation, like building a lunar base and landing the first humans on Mars.
An important benefit of returning the Starship directly to Earth from the Moon is that it aids in the maintainability and reuse of the Starship. Starship can easily be refurbished on Earth, then reflown on another lunar mission.
Contrast this with trying to maintain and reuse a Starship that only transits between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Maintenance would be a nightmare. Detailed up-close visual inspections are necessary. Parts frequently need replacing, and it’s not unusual that an entire engine needs replacing. We just don’t have the facilities in lunar orbit or on the Moon for doing the needed maintenance and refurbishment, and we won’t for quite some time.
Summary and conclusions
Using both the SLS/Orion and the Starship space transportation systems increases the cost of each Artemis mission by roughly a factor of ten. This will not be sustainable. A better plan is to phase out the SLS and Orion programs, ending these programs completely with the Artemis 3 mission. Using only Starship also greatly reduces the complexity of the Artemis missions.
We need to end expensive programs that have questionable value, such as the SLS and Orion. Instead, we need to substitute programs that will inspire the next generation, like building a lunar base and landing the first humans on Mars. Starship will reduce the space transportation costs to the point that we can afford both building a lunar base and landing the first humans on Mars.
Starship is a game-changer. We need to embrace Starship, fully utilizing its capabilities. The space industry will flourish with Starship, and lots of new, high-paying jobs will be created. The advances in space technology will also benefit and enrich the lives of people on Earth.
Gerald Black is a retired aerospace engineer who worked in the aerospace industry for more than 40 years. In his first job at Bell Aerosystems he tested various rocket engines, including the engine for the ascent stage of the Apollo lunar module. He later worked for 39 years at GE Aviation.
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Monday, January 27, 2025
Sunday, January 26, 2025
There Is A Place On Earth That Gets As Much Sun As Venus
What's the sunniest place on Earth?
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January 26, 2025
Original photo by craige bevil/ Alamy Stock Photo
There's a spot on Earth that's nearly as sunny as Venus.
Compared to other planets in our solar system, Earth is filled with impressive landscapes, including snow-capped peaks, lush rainforests, and vast oceans. But some places on our planet are so extreme, they’re otherworldly — like Venus otherworldly. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the driest places in the world, so it makes sense that such a parched ecosystem would get its fair share of sun. But in the summer of 2023, scientists discovered that some parts of this immense plateau in fact get far more sunlight than any other place on Earth. While taking measurements of solar irradiance (light energy from the sun) on the Chajnantor plateau, researchers discovered — via a complex meteorological process known as “forward scattering” — that this area was nearly as sunny in summer as the surface of Venus.
Despite some key differences between the two planets, scientists often call Venus Earth’s twin. Venus is roughly the same size as Earth, formed in the same area of the inner solar system, and is composed of much the same material — scientists even theorize that Venus was just like Earth some 3 billion years ago. But it is definitely not Earthlike now; it’s a sweltering hell planet thanks to an atmosphere of thick carbon dioxide that traps all greenhouse gases. If you somehow found yourself on Venus, high levels of solar irradiance would be the least of your immediate worries, considering its surface temperatures of 900 degrees Fahrenheit and sulfuric acid-filled clouds.
Venus is the
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A Satellite Eavesdropping Station
ground stations
GRU satellite eavesdropping station in Toivorovo in the St.-Petersburg region. Source: Google Earth.
The satellite eavesdropping stations of Russia’s intelligence services (part 1)
by Bart Hendrickx
Monday, January 20, 2025
Russia’s intelligence services operate an impressive series of ground stations to eavesdrop on foreign satellites. Most, if not all, of the targets are communications satellites. There are two separate networks, one operated by the GRU (the country’s military intelligence agency) and the other by the FSB (one of the descendants of the KGB). Most of these facilities were set up back in the days of the Soviet Union and have since been modernized. Several stations located in former Soviet republics had to be abandoned after the collapse of the USSR, but this loss has at least partially been compensated by the establishment of new sites on the Russian mainland and in the annexed Crimean peninsula. Some have been targets of Ukrainian drone attacks in recent months, a clear sign that they are believed to play a considerable role in Russia’s intelligence collection efforts.
Russia's satellite eavesdropping stations are largely shrouded in secrecy. Some details can be found in declassified CIA reports dating back to the Soviet era. However, most of the information in this article has been gathered from a variety of Russian sources, including online forums and social media sites, which will not be individually referenced.
It should be pointed out straightaway that Russia is not the only country to possess a network of satellite eavesdropping stations. Such stations are also operated by the United States, China, and a handful of European nations. America’s National Security Agency (NSA) runs a worldwide network of eavesdropping stations in collaboration with its four partners of the so-called Five Eyes signals intelligence alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom).
The GRU’s Zvezda network
Soviet era
The network run by the GRU is called Zvezda (“star”). The few available accounts of its history trace back its origins to the early 1960s. It was conceived at a military research institute called 45 SNII. This belonged to the Ministry of Defense’s 4th Main Directorate, which was in charge of anti-aircraft, anti-missile, and early warning systems. In 1961, this directorate assumed the additional responsibility of overseeing the development of the USSR’s first anti-satellite system called IS (Russian short for “satellite interceptor”). A specialized department was set up within 45 SNII to work out the theoretical foundations for the IS project.
Some ground stations have been targets of Ukrainian drone attacks in recent months, a clear sign that they are believed to play a considerable role in Russia’s intelligence collection efforts.
The researchers soon realized that two questions would have to be addressed before a decision was made to intercept an enemy satellite. The first was to determine the purpose of the satellite, in order to assess whether it was worth attacking, and the second to accurately calculate its orbital parameters in order to ensure a successful intercept. The latter task could largely be accomplished with ground-based optical and radar systems. While the satellite’s orbit would also provide important clues about its purpose, the researchers concluded that additional information on its mission could be gleaned from intercepting the signals that it downlinked to the ground. They estimated that this would increase the chances of positively identifying its purpose by 20 to 30%. It would also allow to determine if space objects flying over Russian territory were active satellites or merely space junk.
In early 1963, representatives of the 4th Directorate first approached officials of both the KGB and GRU to discuss the wisdom and feasibility of creating a ground-based network of stations to eavesdrop on foreign satellites. They had good reason to raise this matter with the country’s intelligence agencies since both already had departments specializing in signals intelligence (SIGINT). The KGB (Committee for State Security), which was subordinate to the USSR Council of Ministers (the Soviet government), was responsible for both internal security and foreign intelligence, performing functions similar to those of the FBI and CIA in the United States. The GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) was and still is the foreign military intelligence agency of the Armed Forces’ General Staff and the equivalent of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), although their functions do not entirely overlap. The departments within the KGB and GRU responsible for SIGINT were the 16th Directorate and the 6th Directorate respectively. The GRU was also entrusted with processing data obtained by Soviet photoreconnaissance and electronic intelligence satellites.
Although the idea of setting up a foreign satellite SIGINT network was presented to both the KGB and GRU, there seems to have been more support for it in the ranks of the GRU. This was most likely because the potential ASAT targets it would help identify would primarily be military satellites. Ð vital role in its ultimate approval is said to have been played by Mikhail I. Rogatkin, the deputy commander of the GRU’s 6th Directorate. The official go-ahead for the Zvezda network came in the form of a Communist Party and government decree. According to one Russian social media site, the decree (nr. 509-194) was signed on June 30, 1965. This makes sense, because another Party decree (nr. 507-192) issued on the same day is known to have given the go-ahead for developing the country’s ground-based space surveillance system, abbreviated in Russian as SKKP.
The fact that there were separate decrees on Zvezda and SKKP underlines that they were independent networks run by different organizations. SKKP was a network of radar and optical systems to provide tracking and other data on satellites and fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense’s 4th Directorate. Zvezda, the SIGINT system, was in the hands of the GRU. Still, there may have been at least some interaction between the two networks. For instance, Zvezda may well have relied on trajectory measurements from SKKP to keep track of target satellites. Identification of potential ASAT targets does seem to have become much less of a priority for Zvezda at an early stage, with the focus soon shifting to communications intelligence, that is the interception of voice communications relayed by satellite (more on that in part 2 of this article).
Although it looks like Zvezda was approved in 1965, it would appear that actual work on the network began in 1966. This can be deduced from several pins and pennants issued to mark anniversaries of the system. Many of them show what appears to be the official emblem of Zvezda with a big star in the center and two smaller stars in the upper left and right, possibly symbolizing two orbiting satellites.
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Pin commemorating Zvezda’s 50th anniversary in 2016. Source: Russian collector site.
According to one source, the initial goal of Zvezda was to construct three SIGINT sites, which would relay the collected information to a data processing center in the Moscow area. Known as Military Unit 51428, it was built in a place called Zagoryanskiy in the Shcholkovo region in the northeastern outskirts of the capital. It was reportedly officially established on April 15, 1966, which may be considered the formal birth date of the Zvezda network. It served as the headquarters of Zvezda and its commander was in overall charge of the network. Zvezda was initially led by Yevgeniy G. Kolokolov, who was replaced in 1974 by Stepan I. Ternovoi.
In order to be able to intercept signals from foreign satellites, the Zvezda sites had to be located on the periphery of the Soviet Union’s territory.
Eventually, the Zvezda network would grow to consist of 11 sites on Soviet territory. The first tier was declared operational in 1972 and the second (called Zvezda-A) in 1978. Some of the parabolic antennas for Zvezda were placed at existing GRU sites equipped with a radio direction finding system called Krug (“circle”). These were large circular antenna arrays (sometimes called wullenwebers after their German World War Two progenitor) that had been used by the GRU since the early 1950s to pinpoint the position of NATO strategic bombers and reconnaissance aircraft through the method of triangulation. The sites also had other names apart from their Military Unit numbers. At least some were called “Independent Centers for Radio Reconnaissance of Space Objects” (OPRRKO), preceded by a specific number.
In order to be able to intercept signals from foreign satellites, the Zvezda sites had to be located on the periphery of the Soviet Union’s territory. The first priority was to build a site close to the country’s western border. Three locations were considered, namely the region of Kaliningrad (the Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland) and the areas of Mukachevo in Ukraine and Ventspils in Latvia, both republics of the Soviet Union at the time. The choice fell on Ventspils, where construction work got underway not long after the approval of Zvezda. This was a major construction effort. The site (designated Military Unit 51429) had to be built from scratch in a remote location some 20 kilometers northeast of Ventspils and was to house three big dish antennas, various technical support facilities as well as a residential area. It seems to have reached some limited operational capability before the end of the 1960s.
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Map of the Zvezda station near Ventspils, Latvia. The residential area is on the left and the operations zone on the right. It had three parabolic antennas with diameters of 8 meters (nr. 29), 32 meters (nr. 30) and 16 meters (nr. 31). The latter two were connected via tunnels with a technical building (nr. 28). Source
There is conflicting information on exactly when the other sites were incorporated into the system. Four more were built in the western part of the country, more specifically in the vicinity of Moscow and Odessa (Ukraine) as well as in Georgia and Azerbaijan. The site near Odessa seems to have been replaced in the late 1980s by another one in the same area that also had a Krug system.
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Zvezda station in Chabanka near Odessa with a 12-meter parabolic antenna. Source
Deeper inland, close to the country’s southern border, there was a station in Maksimovshchina near Irkutsk in Siberia. Finally, there were two sites in the country’s Far East, one near Yakovlevka and another in Chukotka.
According to various sources, elements of the Zvezda system were also deployed outside the Soviet Union in friendly Communist nations. This made it possible to expand the range of target satellites. The biggest Soviet SIGINT base abroad was in Cuba near Torrens and for some reason was referred to by the CIA as Lourdes. From later revelations it turned out that the site was operated jointly by the GRU, the KGB, and the Soviet Navy, although the GRU seems to have been the prime user. The GRU signals intelligence team (called “Trostnik”) arrived first in late 1963 and was followed later in the 1960s by the Navy team (“Platan”) and in the 1970s by the KGB team (“Orbita”). The Lourdes site was capable of monitoring a wide array of commercial and government communications in the southeastern United States and between the United States and Europe. This included intercepting microwave and shortwave transmissions and picking up telemetry from rockets launched from Cape Canaveral. Gathering foreign satellite intelligence was only one of its tasks. Both the GRU and KGB were involved in this, but the details are sketchy. Some Lourdes veterans claim that the GRU’s satellite SIGINT division in Cuba was not formally incorporated into the Zvezda network until 1993 under the name “10th Radio Electronic Center” (10 RETs).
Other Zvezda units were reportedly located in Vietnam, Mongolia, and Burma (Myanmar). The one in Vietnam was in Cam Ranh Bay, which was home to a major US military base during the Vietnam War until it was captured by North Vietnamese forces in 1975. In 1979 it was leased to the Soviet Union for use as a naval and SIGINT base. The Zvezda unit in Mongolia was part of a larger Soviet intelligence team sent to the country in the late 1960s under the name “Expedition Horizon”. Nothing more is known about the Zvezda unit in Burma, except that it was situated in the capital Rangoon (now Yangon). All these facilities were probably also engaged in other types of SIGINT collection, with the main focus being on China. [1]
Most of the Zvezda sites on the Russian mainland remain operational today. How many exactly there are is a closely guarded secret.
It is not clear if the CIA had a complete picture of the GRU’s satellite eavesdropping network on Soviet territory. Declassified documents mention only the stations near Ventspils (referred to there as the “Vicak Space Tracking Facility”), Yakovlevka (called “Andreyevka satellite communications station”), Maksimovshchina (“Kuda RADCOM receiver station”) and Akstafa in Azerbaijan. None of these were specifically linked to the GRU and only the ones near Ventspils and Yakovlevka were recognized as being used for communications satellite intelligence. This was because some of the parabolic antennas seen there were identical to those observed at the site in Lourdes, Cuba. It should be noted though that the documents declassified to date may provide only limited insight into the CIA’s true understanding of the Zvezda network. [2]
Post-Soviet era
The disintegration of the USSR in late 1991 led to the closure of the Zvezda facilities that were located in the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Latvian sources claim that Russian troops deliberately disabled much of the hardware at the site near Ventspils before definitively pulling out of Latvia in 1994. However, the two antennas that remained (the 16-meter and 32-meter ones) were refurbished for astronomical observations and became the core of the Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center (VIRAC). The 16-meter dish antenna was replaced by a new one last decade. The nearby residential area, called Irbene, is now abandoned and has become a popular destination for urban explorers.
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VIRAC’s 32-meter radio telescope (RT-32), originally part of the GRU’s Zvezda network. Source: Wikipedia
The Zvezda facility in Velikiy Dalnik near Odessa in Ukraine fell in the hands of the Ukrainian army and became known as Military Unit A2571 and the 96th Satellite Radio Intelligence Center. In late 2017, the Ukrainian government allocated money to turn the facility over to the country’s intelligence services, but it is unclear if this actually happened. A Russian strike on the site was reported in March 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its current status is unknown.
Most of the Zvezda sites on the Russian mainland remain operational today. How many exactly there are is a closely guarded secret. One way of identifying them is by looking for pennants of military units belonging to the network. These occasionally appear on Russian collector forums and can be recognized by the telltale emblem of the Zvezda network (one big star in the center and two smaller stars on top). Their locations can be determined via a variety of online sources and Google Earth imagery, which also provides some clues about their current status. Unmistakable signs of ongoing activity are changing antenna orientations, the appearance of new antennas and the presence of vehicles in nearby car parks.
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Pennants of military units belonging to the Zvezda network. One is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the GRU. Source: Russian collector forum.
A total of nine units can be positively identified as belonging to Zvezda, four of which had their origins in the Soviet days. The network’s headquarters (Military Unit 51428) is still in Zagoryanskiy in Moscow’s Shcholkovo region. It is currently headed by Yevgeniy A. Nesterov, who presumably also acts as commander of the entire Zvezda network. Satellite imagery of the site shows only administrative buildings and a few small dish antennas, meaning that it is probably used only for collection and analysis of data gathered by the other sites.
Other Soviet-era sites that are clearly still active are near Yakovlevka in the Far East and Irkutsk in Siberia. In the middle of last decade, there were plans to expand the role of the site near Yakovlevka by building an optical observatory that was to become part of a military space surveillance system called Pritsel. However, there are no signs of it in the most recent Google Earth imagery from November 2022. [3]
There is some uncertainty about the status of the Zvezda site in Shcholkovo (Military Unit 63553), located some four kilometers east of the network’s headquarters, right next to a major space tracking center known as OKIK 14. There are some indications from online sources that the unit may have been disbanded, but a few new smaller dish antennas have shown up at this location in recent years next to the 16-meter antenna that has been around since the Soviet days. A Zvezda unit that was formed near Beringovskiy in Chukotka in 1984 was closed down in 2001 and replaced the following year by a new one about 200 kilometers to the north in Tavaivaam near the city of Anadyr.
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16-meter antenna at Zvezda unit 63553 in Shcholkovo. Source: Russian social media.
The loss of a number of Zvezda units in former Soviet republics was compensated by the creation of new ones within several hundred kilometers on Russian territory. As can be learned from a picture posted on a Russian social media site, a decision was made in 1994 to transfer at least some of the personnel of the former Zvezda site in Ventspils, Latvia, to an already existing GRU facility in Toivorovo (nr. 41480) in the St.-Petersburg region. This already had a Krug radio direction finding system and was now gradually expanded with parabolic antennas for the Zvezda network.
A new unit (25137) was set up even closer to Latvia in the city of Kaliningrad. Based on Google Earth imagery, it was built sometime between 2003 and 2007. Whereas all the others are in relatively remote locations, this one, remarkably enough, is in the middle of a residential area. In April 2022, Ukraine’s military intelligence service published a list of employees of the unit, claiming they had been involved in war crimes in Ukraine. It is unclear what kind of combat role they could have had there. [4]
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Zvezda unit 25137 in the city of Kaliningrad. Source: Google Street View
Another new Zvezda facility (nr. 33443) was constructed near Mikhailovsk in the Stavropol region in southwestern Russia, about 500 kilometers north of the abandoned site in Azerbaijan (nr. 12151). It is visible in the earliest available Google Earth imagery from 2002. Evidence that it serves as a replacement for station 12151 comes from the fact that both unit numbers are seen on some pennants and pins.
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 allowed Russia to build a new Zvezda facility (nr. 65372) in the area of Sevastopol, which is just over 300 kilometers south of the unit near Odessa that fell in the hands of Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR. Both the new Zvezda units (33443 and 63572) were targets of Ukrainian drone attacks in July 2024. [5]
Meanwhile, there are some indications that Russia may be planning to revive its SIGINT activities in Cuba.
At least two of the Zvezda units stationed abroad (the ones in Cuba and Vietnam) continued to operate for another decade until the then newly elected President Vladimir Putin decided to close them down in 2001. As can be learned from a handful of online sources, the Cuban GRU unit (or at least part of it) was re-located to Klimovsk about 50 kilometers south of Moscow to form the new Military Unit 47747. It became part of an already existing GRU site in Klimovsk called Military Unit 34608, also informally known as Gudok (“horn”, “whistle”). This has existed since the Soviet days. A history of the GRU published in 1999 identified it as a center that collected and processed data from the GRU’s SIGINT stations on Soviet territory and abroad and claimed that a similar role was performed by a facility in Vatutinki near Moscow. [6] If that is true, the division of labor between them and the Zvezda headquarters in Zagoryanskiy is not entirely clear. Possibly, Klimovsk and Vatutinki were (and still are) nerve centers for the GRU’s overall SIGINT collection effort and Zagoryanskiy focuses solely on satellite-related SIGINT.
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The Cuban roots of Military Unit 47747 are evident from this pennant showing both the Russian and Cuban flags. Source: forum of Lourdes veterans.
Satellite imagery shows the appearance of numerous parabolic antennas at the site in Klimovsk after 2005, some of which may have been transferred from Cuba. Military Unit 47747 was formally disbanded in 2013, but it looks like that was no more than a bureaucratic move. Judging from satellite images, the antenna field in Klimovsk (referred to by some sources as “Zone 5”) continues to be active to the present day. While there is no evidence that it is part of Zvezda, it is hard to imagine it is not. Military Unit 34608 was attacked by Ukrainian drones in August 2024. It is not known if Zone 5 was the target of the attack and, if so, whether it was damaged. This GRU unit is spread over a significant area and also includes two other zones, one with Krug direction finding antennas and another with unidentified antennas that may be related to tropospheric or ionospheric communication. [7]
Meanwhile, there are some indications that Russia may be planning to revive its SIGINT activities in Cuba. A recent investigation by The Insider shows that GRU employees disguised as diplomats (including veterans of Military Unit 47747) have been deployed to the island, possibly to take part in that work. [8] However, no evidence has been presented so far that actual hardware is already being constructed. Recent research has also uncovered the presence of Chinese SIGINT facilities in Cuba and it has been speculated that China and Russia may share signals intelligence data.
Table 1: GRU satellite eavesdropping stations on Soviet/Russian territory.
MILITARY UNIT NR. OTHER NAME(S)* LOCATION** NOTES
51428 99 GTsSS Zagoryanskiy (Moscow region) Network headquarters. No major antennas.
63553 407 OPRRKO Shcholkovo (Moscow region) Probably active.
34608 (47747) 10 RETs Klimovsk (Moscow region) Active. Not confirmed as being part of Zvezda. Co-located with Krug system. Attacked by Ukraine in August 2024.
51870 1580 OPRRKO Maksimovshchina (CIA: Kuda) (Irkutsk region) Active. Co-located with Krug system.
51430 649 OPRRKO Yakovlevka (CIA: Andreyevka) (Far East) Active.
41480 876 ORPUS Toivorovo (St.-Petersburg region) Active. Co-located with Krug system.
25137 1237 TsS RER Kaliningrad Active. Set up between 2003 and 2007.
33443 Moskovskoye (Stavropol region) Active. Replaced Military Unit 12151. Attacked by Ukraine in July 2024.
65372 Sevastopol (Crimea) Active. Set up in 2015. Attacked by Ukraine in July 2024.
90099 Tavaivaam (Chukotka) Active. Replaced Military Unit 51595 in 2002. Co-located with unfinished Krug system.
51595 902 ORPU Beringovskiy (Chukotka) Inactive. Shut down in 2001. Co-located with Krug system.
51429 649 OPRRKO Ventspils (CIA: Vicak) (Latvia) Inactive. Two antennas now used for radio astronomy.
48657 539 OPRRKO Chabanka (Odessa region/Ukraine) Inactive. Presumably shut down in the late 1980s and replaced by Military Unit 42028.
42028/A-2571 449 OPRRKO/96 OTsRRKO Velikiy Dalnik (Odessa region/Ukraine) Owned by Ukraine. Co-located with Krug system. Attacked by Russia in March 2022. Status unknown.
12151 Agstafa (Azerbaijan) Inactive. Replaced by Military Unit 33443.
51868 Gardabani (Georgia) Inactive. Co-located with Krug system.
*Some of these names may no longer be in use
**The hyperlinked place names lead to the most recent Google Earth imagery of the sites. The place names are those usually given by Russian sources or those of the most nearby places in Google Earth imagery. Alternative place names given in CIA documents are added.
The KGB/FSB network
Soviet era
As explained earlier, the KGB had been involved in the discussions leading up to the creation of the GRU’s Zvezda network in the mid-1960s. Although Zvezda became the responsibility of the GRU, the KGB seems to have played at least some kind of role in the project. For instance, there was a KGB division at the Zvezda site near Ventspils in Latvia which had a different number (93364) than its GRU neighbor (51429). There are also some indications that the KGB had a division at the big GRU SIGINT site near Yakovlevka in Russia’s Far East and, as mentioned before, GRU and KGB teams were co-deployed at the SIGINT site in Lourdes, Cuba.
However, the KGB’s 16th Directorate (responsible for SIGINT) eventually also established its own dedicated network of satellite listening stations. It is not known if the network was officially created at a specific moment or even if it has an overall name. The satellite interception hardware was installed at already existing KGB sites that were equipped with conventional antennas for picking up high-frequency (HF) radio transmissions. As the emphasis shifted to foreign satellite intelligence in the 1970s and 1980s, many of the HF antennas were gradually replaced by parabolic dish antennas.
The existence of the Soviet-era KGB network came to light in 2012 with the declassification of a 1983 CIA report titled “KGB COMINT Collection Sites”. [9] The stations were spread across Soviet territory in much the same way as those of the GRU’s Zvezda network. The headquarters were situated near Chekhov, some 70 kilometers south of Moscow. Unlike the headquarters of the Zvezda system, this was also engaged in intelligence collection itself. A handful of sources refer to it as the Central Special Service Radio Node (TsRUSS), whereas the other sites belonging to the network were called Independent Special Service Radio Nodes (ORUSS). Another name seen for them is Special Communications Center (TsSS). Even though the KGB was not a military organization, all the stations were also assigned Military Unit numbers in a possible attempt to cover up their real owner.
There were eight stations in the western part of the country: two in the Moscow area (including the headquarters), one near Leningrad, one in Lithuania, one near Saratov, one in Georgia and two in Ukraine (some sources mention a third one in Balaklava in Crimea, but there is no further information on this). Further inland, close to the southern border, there was a station in Kazakhstan, just a few kilometers from the border with Uzbekistan. Two more stations were in the Far East of the USSR near Khabarovsk and Vladivostok.
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CIA map showing the location of Soviet-era KGB satellite eavesdropping stations. Source
Post-Soviet era
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the KGB split up into several smaller entities. The 16th Main Directorate, responsible for SIGINT, was absorbed by a new organization called the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information (FAPSI), more or less the equivalent of the US National Security Agency. Within FAPSI, the 16th Main Directorate was reorganized as the 3rd Main Directorate, also known as the Main Directorate for Radio-Electronic Intelligence of Communications Systems (GURRS). After the dissolution of FAPSI in 2003, the 3rd Main Directorate (or at least part of it) was transferred to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the domestic security and counterintelligence agency that had evolved from the KGB’s internal security departments. There it became known as the 16th Center, also called the Center for Radio-Electronic Intelligence by Means of Communication (TsRRSS) and Military Unit 71330. Aside from its SIGINT activities, the 16th Center also seems to have taken on an important role in cyberwarfare. It has been in the news several times in recent years because of its alleged involvement in cyber operations against critical infrastructure in various countries.
The existence of the Soviet-era KGB network came to light in 2012 with the declassification of a 1983 CIA report titled “KGB COMINT Collection Sites”.
In the wake of the USSR’s collapse, FAPSI had to abandon the stations located in former Soviet republics, but the ones situated within the boundaries of the Russian Federation (six in all) remained active. This was not realized until 2013, when National Security Agency veteran and SIGINT historian Matthew Aid used the declassified CIA report on the Soviet-era KGB stations to analyze their status with the help of satellite imagery. [10] It has since become possible to learn more about the fate of the abandoned stations and also to identify several new ones that have been built to compensate for their loss.
The site in Georgia (nr. 61615) was closed down, but its personnel were moved to a new SIGINT site (nr. 11380) in Dubovyy Rynok in the Krasnodar region about 400 kilometers from the border with Georgia. Another station belonging to the FSB’s 16th Center (nr. 03110) is right next to the Georgian border in Vesyoloye. It has several antennas covered by radomes, but it is not clear if these are used to eavesdrop on satellites. [11]
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New FSB COMINT collection site in Dubovyy Rynok in the Krasnodar region in southwestern Russia. Source: Google Earth.
The station in in Kazakhstan (nr. 83521) remained in the hands of FAPSI until it was turned over to the Kazakh authorities in 1998. It was renamed Military Unit 2020 and placed under the authority of the Border Service of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, the country’s intelligence agency. Judging from Google Earth images, it is still active. Most of the Russian personnel was transferred to a new site in Verbnoye in the Kaliningrad region which retained the unit number of the former Kazakh station. It is just about 200 kilometers west of the former KGB station in Linksmakalnis in Lithuania, which was closed down after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and has presumably taken over at least part of its functions. Additional coverage of the Baltic region is provided by another new station (Military Unit 49911) near Georgiyevskaya in the Pskov region, just a few kilometers from the border with Estonia.
ground stations
FSB site nr. 49911 in the Pskov region. Source
The two Soviet-era sites in Ukraine, situated in Dobroaleksandrovka in the Odessa region and near Lypikva in the Lviv region, became the property of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), which turned them over to the country’s newly formed Foreign Intelligence Service (SZRU) in 2004. In late 2020, a tender was published for repair work at the station near Dobroaleksandrovka (known as Ovidiopol-2), which was interpreted by some Russian media at the time as a sign that it was to be transferred to NATO not only for signals intelligence but also for electronic jamming of Russian satellites. According to Russian media reports, the site was “totally destroyed” in a Russian attack in March 2024, a claim that it is impossible to verify in the absence of recent satellite imagery. The status of the other Ukrainian SIGINT site near Lypivka is unknown. There have so far been no reports of any Russian attacks at this location.
Russia, in turn, regained control of a facility near Alushta in Crimea featuring a 25-meter dish antenna and two smaller ones. According to some sources, the site was established in the late 1960s for space tracking. After the collapse of the USSR, it was taken over by Ukraine’s intelligence services and apparently repurposed for SIGINT, although it is unknown how much work was actually done with it. Following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the site was renamed Military Unit 28735 and became the property of the FSB, which most likely uses it for foreign satellite intelligence. The station was reported to be the scene of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks in December 2023 and May 2024 and it is not known to what extent it has been damaged.
ground stations
FSB Military Unit 28735 on the shores of the Black Sea. Source
Table 2: KGB/FSB satellite eavesdropping stations.
MILITARY UNIT NR. OTHER NAME(S)* LOCATION** NOTES
51952 TsRUSS/17 TsSS Nerastannoye (CIA: Barantsevo) (Moscow region) Network headquarters. Active.
61608 1 ORUSS/20 TsSS Tsaritsyno (CIA: Biryulevo) (Moscow region) Active.
61240 4 ORUSS/23 TsSS Mikhailovka (CIA: Krasnoye Selo) (St.-Petersburg region) Active.
44231 19 TsSS Voskhod (CIA: Balashov) (Saratov region) Active.
83417 25 TsSS Shkotovo (Vladivostok region) Active.
70822 18 TsSS Vostochnoye (CIA: Khabarovsk) (Khabarovsk region) Active.
83521 21 TsSS Verbnoye (Kaliningrad region) Active. Transferred from Kazakhstan.
49911 22 TsSS Georgiyevskaya (Pskov region) Active.
11380 - Dubovyy Rynok (Krasnodar region) Active. Replaced Military Unit 61615.
E6362/K1401/28735 - Alushta (Crimea) Active. Taken over from Ukraine. Attacked by Ukraine in December 2023 and May 2024.
71272 6 ORUSS Linksmakalnis (CIA: Kaunas) (Lithuania) Inactive.
83525/E6398/K1412 Lypivka (CIA: Dymovka) (Lviv region, Ukraine) Status unknown. Owned by Ukraine.
21489/E6282/K1415 8 ORUSS Dobroaleksandrovka (Odessa region/Ukraine) Active. Owned by Ukraine. Attacked by Russia in March 2024.
83521/2020 10 ORUSS Saryagash (Kazakhstan) Active. Owned by Kazakhstan. Russian personnel moved to Verbnoye, Kaliningrad region.
61615 Gardabani (CIA: Rustavi) (Georgia) Inactive. Replaced by Military Unit 11380.
*Some of these names may no longer be in use
**The hyperlinked place names lead to the most recent Google Earth imagery of the sites. The place names are those usually given by Russian sources or those of the most nearby places in Google Earth imagery. Alternative place names given in CIA documents are added.
References
Among the sources used for the Soviet-era history of Zvezda are: Memoirs of Aleksandr Gorelik in a history of the 45 SNII research institute, 2005 ; History of the GRU’s SIGINT activities by Mikhail Boltunov, 2011, p. 156-160 ; Memoirs of GRU veteran Oleg Krivopalov, 2011. Krivopalov served at Zvezda unit nr. 51430 near Yakovlevka in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 2017 he published a book entirely dedicated to the history of this Zvezda unit, but this is not available online. Bibliographical details are here.
CIA documents related to the GRU stations were published in October 1977 (Similarity between electronics facilities at Lourdes, Cuba, and Vicak, USSR), August 1980 (Lourdes central Sigint complex) and March 1982 (Activity at selected Soviet space tracking facilities).
Tender documentation published in July 2016. More on Pritsel in this thread on the NASA Spaceflight Forum (see Replies 2 and 10).
List published by Ukraine’s military intelligence service in April 2022.
S. Syngaivska, Over 450 km behind lines: Ukraine targets secret Russian base with the Zvezda space reconnaissance system, Defense Express, July 4, 2024.
History of the GRU by A. Kolpakidi and D. Prokhorov, 1999, p. 44.
Mysterious Gudok: what is the strategic intelligence center attacked by Ukraine near Moscow, Defense Express, August 22, 2024.
S. Kanev, Our men in Havana: arrival of GRU specialists in Cuba points to Russia reviving its base for spying on the US, The Insider, June 27, 2023.
KGB COMINT collection stations, USSR, CIA report published in October 1983.
Blogpost by Matthew Aid, July 2, 2013.
The latest Google Earth imagery of the FSB SIGINT site 03110 in Vesyoloye is here. The fact that it is subordinate to the FSB’s 16th Center (Military Unit 71330) can be determined from court documentation published in 2017.
Bart Hendrickx is a longtime observer of the Russian space program.
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