Monday, March 31, 2025
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Friday, March 28, 2025
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Hypersonic Airliners Are Getting Closer
https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/hypersonic-commercial-flights-1236353762/
Could A U.S. And Chinese Super Computer With Artificial Intellgence Join Forces To Take Over The World?
In my recovery from an outbreak of arthritis, I have had the opportunity to watch many podcasts on YouTube. I found a most obscure and fascinating podcast. A gifted filmmaker had used artificial intelligence and computer graphics to slightly change the last part of the classic film "2001 A Space Odyssey."
One thing caught my mind and stuck with me. IN 1966, almost 60 years ago, Sir Arthur C. Clarke and film producer Stanley Kubrick had foreseen the real possibility of an advanced computer taking on its own personality and doing destructive things to humans. The HAL9000 computer played a big part in the latter part of the film. Most of us know this movie well. The words "artificial intelligence" was never used.
At the same time this film was being produced in London, an obscure but visionary British science fiction author named Dennis Feltham Jones published a book titled "Colossus." In the book, the US government decides that control of its massive nuclear arsenal should not be left in human hands. A computer genius named Dr. Charles Forban is hired to design and implement this most advanced computer named Colossus. The computer develops its personality that we would now describe as artificial intelligence. The computer takes over the whole US government. It was discovered that the Soviets had developed a similar computer. The two computers join forces. They take over the world.
"Colossus" was not a best seller. It did not win any coveted science fiction awards like the Hugo Award. It did find its way to Studio City, California. Executives at Universal Studios loved the book. They bought the rights to the book. They approved a large budget to do a feature film. "Colossus The Forban Project." Gregory Peck was initially offered the part of Dr. Charles Forban. He declined the offer. After discussions with several other big-name actors, they chose a virtually unknown German actor named Eric Braden to play Dr. Forban. This turned out to be a brilliant choice.
"Colossus The Forban Project" premiered in 1970. It was a box office flop. Over the next 55 years, it has become a cult classic that has made Universal Studios a lot of money.
If you are curious about this film, you can stream it on iTunes or order the DVD from Amazon.
Almost 60 years ago, visionaries saw the potential of computers running amuck with horrible results for humanity.
Today, we have the US and China racing to be the world leaders in artificial intelligence. On the US side, Sam Altman with Chat GPT and Elon Musk with X A.I. are in an intense competition to control artificial intelligence in the Western world. Musk has the edge in the competition as his main benefactor is President Trump. Musk is building a giant artificial intelligence facility in Memphis, Tennessee. His computer will be named GROK (Colossus?) The Chinese government is investing massive amounts of money in artificial intelligence.
Could the Universal Studios movie from 55 years ago be a prophecy for what comes next with AI? Could Grok and its Chinese counterpart join forces and rule the world? Please take some time to reflect on this.
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
A Final Twist On The Starliner Saga
Crew Dragon
The Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom splashes down off the Florida coast March 18 to conclude the Crew-9 mission. (credit: NASA/Keegan Barber)
A final twist in the Starliner saga
by Jeff Foust
Monday, March 24, 2025
Their return to Earth, at least from a technical point of view, was all but flawless.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom undocked from the International Space Station in the early morning hours last Tuesday. More than 16 hours later, it reentered the atmosphere, deploying two drogue chutes, followed by four main parachutes, in clear blue skies. A drone captured stunning high-definition video of the descending capsule as it splashed down off the Florida coast south of Tallahassee. About a half-hour later, the capsule was aboard the SpaceX recovery ship, a process monitored not just the ships’ crews but also a pod of dolphins in the water, evidently curious about the ruckus.
(The great video provided by the drone may have been a little too good: a Boston TV meteorologist said on social media that the video had “strong hints of AI enhancement,” a claim that got him his fair share of ridicule.)
“Things that I can’t control I’m not going to fret over,” Wilmore said in a call with reported a week after Starliner returned. “My transition maybe wasn’t instantaneous but it was pretty close.”
Freedom’s splashdown marked the end of the Crew-9 mission, bringing back NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who launched to the ISS on that spacecraft in late September. But the bulk of the attention about the spacecraft’s return focused on its other two occupants, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who had been on the station since June when they arrived on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission.
Williams and Wilmore, of course, were only scheduled to spend a short time on the station, as little as eight days. But days turned to weeks and then months because of problems with Starliner that eventually led NASA to bring back Starliner without a crew on board in September (see “Whither Starliner?”, The Space Review, September 9, 2024). NASA removed two astronauts originally assigned to Crew-9 to free up seats that Williams and Wilmore would use to return home.
The splashdown returned Williams and Wilmore back to Earth more than nine months after their launch, ending that extended mission. But it was one that took unexpected political twists in the final months that overshadowed the issues with the spacecraft that took the two to the station.
Neither stranded nor abandoned
Immediately after Starliner’s uncrewed departure, the two CFT astronauts said they were taking the extended mission in stride. “Things that I can’t control I’m not going to fret over,” Wilmore said in a call with reported a week after Starliner returned. “My transition maybe wasn’t instantaneous but it was pretty close.”
In the months that followed, the two were full members of the ISS crew, doing research and maintenance. The only controversy was tabloid media fodder that Williams was somehow unwell, based on photos her on the station; she stated she was healthy.
That changed, though, shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, also a close advisor to the president, posted on social media January 28 that the president asked SpaceX to bring the two “stranded” astronauts on the station—meaning Williams and Wilmore—back home “as soon as possible.”
Trump, in his own post hours later, confirmed that. “I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration,” he stated. “Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!”
It was unclear at the time what it meant for SpaceX to bring the two back as soon as possible: an early return of Crew-9, a dedicated mission of some kind?
“They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden,” Trump said. “He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space… He didn’t want the publicity.”
It was only the next day before NASA provided any guidance: “NASA and SpaceX are expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as soon as practical, while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions,” the agency stated. That was, of course, the original plan that NASA announced last August.
The controversy continued as Musk and Trump both claimed that the CFT astronauts were “abandoned” on the station for political reasons. “They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” Musk said in a joint appearance with Trump February 18 on Fox News.
“They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden,” Trump said. “He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space… He didn’t want the publicity.”
Musk also claimed to have offered the Biden Administration a proposal to bring back Williams and Wilmore early. “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago,” he said in one social media post. “I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused.” (The post was in response to criticism from ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen; Musk’s response included a slur directed at Mogensen.)
Musk has repeated the claim that he offered the Biden Administration a plan for an earlier return of the two astronauts, but has not provided any details such as who he contacted at the White House and when, as well as what the plan was itself. Also unclear was why Musk would directly go to the White House, given his poor relationship with the Biden Administration at the time, rather than contact NASA. Former agency leaders, such as administrator Bill Nelson and deputy administrator Pam Melroy, said they were unaware of any proposals Musk might have made to the White House.
Any sort of early return of Williams and Wilmore would have been difficult to pull off. SpaceX had four operational Crew Dragon spacecraft, including Freedom at the ISS and Endeavour, which returned from the ISS in late October for the Crew-8 mission. Resilience was flown on the Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission in September (and will launch again next week on Fram2, another private astronaut mission); it also lacked a docking adapter needed for ISS missions. That left only Endurance, which was being prepared for the Ax-4 private astronaut mission to the ISS in the spring.
SpaceX was also building a fifth Crew Dragon capsule, which was slated to fly for the first time on Crew-10. But in December, NASA said that delays in the production of that spacecraft would delay the Crew-10 launch, then scheduled for mid-February, to late March. SpaceX was thus helping extend the stay of the “abandoned” astronauts.
With the prospect of more delays in that new Crew Dragon, NASA announced in mid-February that it would instead use Endurance. That would allow Crew-10’s launch to be moved up a couple weeks, although still behind its earlier schedule. Ax-4 will instead use the new, unnamed Crew Dragon, likely in May or June.
While this was going on, the CFT astronauts were pushing back against the narrative that they were “stranded” or “abandoned” on the station. “I don’t think I’m abandoned. I don’t think we’re stuck up here,” Williams said in one interview with CBS in early February. “We’ve got food. We’ve got clothes. We have a ride home in case anything really bad does happen to the International Space Station.”
“We don’t feel abandoned,” Wilmore said in another interview with CNN a few days later. “We don’t feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed.”
“Steve had been talking about how we might need to juggle the flights and switch capsules, you know, a good month before there was any discussion outside of NASA, but the President’s interest sure added energy to the conversation,” said Bowersox.
In a press conference from the station in early March, Wilmore appeared to endorse Musk’s claim that he offered an early return of the astronauts. “I can only say Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual,” Wilmore said, but added he did not have any knowledge himself of any proposals. “We have no information about that whatsoever, though: what was offered, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how that process went. That’s information that we simply don’t have.”
At two briefings in March, one a week before the March 14 launch of Crew-10 and the other hours after the Crew-9 splashdown, NASA officials danced around questions about Musk’s comments and any proposals he may or may not have made to bring Williams and Wilmore home earlier.
Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, said before the Crew-10 launch that planning to swap Crew Dragon spacecraft predated the January comments by Musk and Trump. The goal was to get Crew-10 launched, and Crew-9 returned, before a Soyuz crew rotation flight in April, followed by a cargo Dragon mission.
“I can verify that Steve had been talking about how we might need to juggle the flights and switch capsules, you know, a good month before there was any discussion outside of NASA, but the President’s interest sure added energy to the conversation,” added Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for space operations.
He said NASA had worked with SpaceX last year on alternative options for bringing back Wilmore and Williams. “When it comes to adding on missions or bringing a capsule home early, those were always options, but we ruled them out pretty quickly, just based on how much money we've got in our budget and the importance of keeping crews on the International Space Station.”
Bill Gerstenmaier, a former NASA official who is now vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, agreed, offering no details on what SpaceX might have proposed for an earlier return. “We worked with NASA collectively to come up with the idea of just flying two crew up on Crew-9, having the seats available for Suni and Butch to come home, and that's what NASA wanted, and that fit their plans,” he said.
NASA officials were no more forthcoming after Crew-9’s splashdown. “That excited the system. It gave us some energy in the system,” Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said of the Trump administration’s role in the mission’s return.
That came after a social media post by Trump on March 17 where he said he had talked with NASA’s acting administrator, Janet Petro. “Janet was great. She said, ‘Let’s bring them home NOW, Sir!’ — And I thanked her,” he wrote. (A NASA spokesperson confirmed that Trump and Petro had talked, but did not provide any details of that conversation, including whether she uttered the quote Trump attributed to her.)
“Per President Trump’s direction, NASA and SpaceX worked diligently to pull the schedule a month earlier,” Petro said in a NASA press release after splashdown. “This international crew and our teams on the ground embraced the Trump Administration’s challenge of an updated, and somewhat unique, mission plan, to bring our crew home.”
Starliner
The CST-100 Starliner spacecraft departing from the ISS in September, as seen from a window on a Crew Dragon spacecraft also at the station. There is no firm schedule yet for Starliner’s return to the ISS. (credit: NASA)
Starliner’s future
The discussion about how the two Starliner astronauts would be brought back to the station overshadowed another issue: why they had to stay on the ISS in the first place. Neither NASA nor Boeing had said much about the issues with Starliner in the months since the spacecraft’s uncrewed return in early September.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), in its annual report released in February, praised NASA for its decision to return Starliner uncrewed, citing the failure of a thruster—unrelated to those that caused problems during docking—on the capsule’s return. “Had the crew been aboard, this would have significantly increased the risk during reentry, confirming the wisdom of the decision,” the report stated.
Paul Hill, a member of ASAP, said at a late January meeting of the committee that there was progress in the post-flight investigation. “NASA reported that significant progress is being made regarding Starliner CFT’s post-flight activities,” he said. “Integrated NASA-Boeing teams have begun closing out flight observations and in-flight anomalies.”
However, that excluded the propulsion system, whose helium leaks and thruster problems were key reasons why NASA decided not to have Williams and Wilmore return on the spacecraft. “The program anticipates the propulsive system anomalies will remain open,” he said, “pending ongoing test campaigns.”
“The next flight up would really test all the changes we’re making to the vehicle,” Stich said of Starliner, “and then the next fight beyond that, we really need to get Boeing into a crew rotation.”
It wasn’t until the two briefings this month that NASA officials provided details into the status of Starliner and when—and how—it will next fly. “We're making good progress on closing out the inflight anomalies and the inflight observations” from the CFT mission, Stich said before the Crew-10 launch, noting that about 70% of those issues were now closed.
But, he said more testing was needed of Starliner’s propulsion system, such as new seals to correct the helium leaks and tests of the thermal environment of the “doghouses” on Starliner’s service module that host thrusters. “Once we get through those campaigns, we’ll know a little bit better” when to schedule the next Starliner flight, he said.
After Crew-9’s return, Stich said NASA wanted to fly another Starliner test flight, then have it start flying the same crew rotation missions that Crew Dragon has been doing since 2020. “So, the next flight up would really test all the changes we’re making to the vehicle, and then the next fight beyond that, we really need to get Boeing into a crew rotation. So, that’s the strategy.”
That test flight, he added, could be with or without a crew, but even if it is an uncrewed flight it would be the same configuration as a crewed vehicle.
One key issue beyond Starliner’s technical problems is Boeing’s continued willingness to support the program. The company reported more than half a billon dollars in charges against earnings due to Starliner in 2024, and overall losses now exceed $2 billion. At the same time, Kelly Ortberg, who became Boeing CEO last year, said he wanted to find non-core programs outside of commercial aviation and defense to cut to help the company get back on its financial feet.
Stich said after splashdown that Boeing remained committed to Starliner. “Boeing, all the way up to their new CEO, Kelly [Ortberg], has been committed to Starliner,” he said, citing its ongoing work to resolve the problems Starliner suffered on the CFT mission. “I see a commitment from Boeing to continue the program. They realized that that they have an important vehicle, and we were very close to having the capability that we would like to field.”
One issue is finding a place in the schedule for both another Starliner test flight and beginning crew rotation missions. A busy schedule of visiting vehicles to the ISS, including cargo Dragon missions and the Ax-4 private astronaut mission, means the next opportunity for Starliner to go to the ISS might not be until late this year or early next year, assuming the spacecraft is ready.
NASA is still working on the schedule for future commercial crew missions. Crew-11 will launch as soon as late July on another Crew Dragon. Stich said NASA has not decided if it will be followed early next year by either Crew-12 or the first operational Starliner mission, Starliner-1. “We probably have a little bit more time, as we get into the summer and understand that the testing we’re going to go do to make that decision,” he said. The Starliner astronauts know all about having some extra time.
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.
Boeing's 1959 Concept For A Lunar Base
Mars habitat
Figure 1: Boeing’s early lunar base concept (credit: Copyright © Boeing 2025 [22])
Boeing’s early lunar base concept of 1959
by Hans Dolfing
Monday, March 24, 2025
In the late 1950s after Sputnik, America went head over heels into the space race: rockets, space stations, winged spacecraft, logistics, the works. Everything was studied from a military point of view as well through civilian eyes via a fledgling NASA.
To obtain the ultimate high ground, the US Air Force studied the what, how, and when of military lunar bases. One of the System Requirement (SR) studies to prepare USAF long-range plans was SR-183. On November 13, 1957, Gen. Bernhard Schriever (AFBMD) ordered preparation of a plan for a 10- to 15-year program leading to development of man-carrying vehicle systems for space exploration.[21] Meanwhile, the bill to create NASA as a civilian space agency was drafted and submitted to Congress on April 2, 1958.[20]
From the start, the document titled “Human Factors - Lunar Observatory” provides a fascinating view of the late 1950s effort. To keep an expeditionary force on the Moon alive for such observations required some pretty deep thinking.
The study SR-183 commenced April 4, 1958, and included the unclassified “Lunar Observatory Study” as well as the April 1960 classified “Military Lunar Base Program.”[2,17,19] It had three funded and three voluntary contractors. The three funded contractors were Boeing Airplane Company from Seattle, Washington, under contract AF18(600)-1824; North American Aviation from Downey, California; and United Aircraft Corporation from East Hartford, Connecticut.[2]
In a completely separate but contemporary effort, the US Army studied a future lunar base via “Project Horizon” starting on March 20, 1959. Overviews of this and a myriad of related lunar programs at the time have been studied elsewhere.[10-13,18]
More than six decades later, the USAF SR studies remain shrouded in mystery and minimal content has been published. For this particular Boeing Lunar base study, there at least 35 technical reports of between 8 to 230 pages each, for a total of 1,596 pages.[1,4,5,23,24] The number of pages clearly demonstrate that this was a significant effort: it has twice as many pages as compared to the Army’s “Project Horizon”.[3,10,11,23] Here, several of Boeing’s reports are examined in more detail to share a picture of the envisioned lunar innovation.[1,4,5]
From the start, the document titled “Human Factors - Lunar Observatory” and numbered D7-3046 provides a fascinating view of the late 1950s effort.[1] To keep an expeditionary force on the Moon alive for such observations required some pretty deep thinking. After all, this was a decade before America finally set foot on the moon in 1969. At 80 pages, it starts with an introduction, summary, and recommendations, followed by a discussion of the lunar base plus the mobility aspects on how to get around and get work done on the Moon. The report also mentions input from related human engineering study results such as from Dyna-Soar.[14]
It was clear that the costs of transporting all food, water, and oxygen to the Moon would be prohibitive, if not impossible, with the technology of the time. Therefore, the most pressing issues in the study were not the rockets but the how to recycle and farm effectively to save transported mass. Topics such as zero-gravity urine and wastewater recycling equipment were fairly new. Food recycling in zero gravity needed work as well, and photosynthetic air recycling systems with the use of algae and plants was almost science fiction. The study realized that putting the astronauts effectively on a vegetable or algae diet would be a big ask but it was a possibility, as they did not know how to farm animals on the Moon yet. The document observes “The expansion of algae and broadleaf plant systems to support animal proteins as in fish or chickens presents an interesting challenge.”[1]
A multi-step approach would be necessary to bootstrap an effective operation such as an observatory on the Moon. On the first landing, the initial activities of astronauts were projected to include scientific measurements and making color images, which was really not dissimilar from what actually happened ten years later with Apollo 11. The initial thinking on how to move instruments and equipment around on the Moon was to put them on a toboggan sled that was to be pulled and towed by an astronaut.
It was clear that the costs of transporting all food, water, and oxygen to the Moon would be prohibitive, if not impossible, with the technology of the time. Therefore, the most pressing issues in the study were not the rockets but the how to recycle and farm effectively to save transported mass.
In a related study, crew sizes roughly between 2 and 21 astronauts were compared and evaluated into required living space for the lunar base. Figure 1 provides a visualization. A small base aimed at four to six astronauts for six months on the Moon offered a base size of 4,275 cubic feet (121 cubic meters). A larger base concept aimed at supporting 21 astronauts in a space of 7260 cubic feet (205 cubic meters) for a six-month stay. That size was the total enclosure for all items except reactor, large optics and antennae plus 10% allocated to growth.[18]
With respect to the mission for a lunar base, the study observes, “The primary mission of the lunar base is assumed to be to collect, record, process and transmit data.” This mission would entail the use of analog and digital computers. The fact that some of these had never been tested in a low- or high-gravity environment was a challenge. Unlike the pocket-size devices of today, this was at the advent of the computer age where machines were often wall-sized with delicate components such as vacuum tubes.
On the data processing side, an example of a contemporary digital computer was the IBM 704 used roughly between 1955 and 1960. It used vacuum tubes for logic and magnetic cores for memory. The word length was 36 bits and it was programmed with the brand new FORTRAN programming language. It could run at 12 kFLOPS for scientific computations. Based on the memo in Figure 2, we know that Boeing used such a machine for lunar trajectory calculations related the SR-183 project.[15]
Note that the memo is dated May 24, 1960, from the civilian NASA Langley Research Center addressed to the military USAF Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) at Langley related to Boeing’s work on SR-183 and lunar trajectory calculations. While the memo has survived at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the enclosed listings and stacks of punch cards with the program code are missing.[15,16]
Mars habitat
Figure 2: Boeing SR-183 request for lunar trajectory computation progress. [16]
With respect to mobility, ideas of “space suits” and pressurized environments had been discussed many years earlier. It was clear that a pressurized lunar base was necessary to assure the physiological and psychological well-being of the crew.[1,9] This led to questions on how to maintain a treatable atmosphere, the ecological system required, and tools and suits for work and maintenance in vacuum.
To live in a pressurized base on the Moon required special consideration of the atmospheric environment similar to scuba diving. While detailed assessments were calculated in separate reports, the summary here was that an atmosphere equivalent to a height of 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) would work and avoid hypoxia. It was observed that “It is estimated that the average oxygen consumption per man for 24 hours will be 800 liters and the corresponding carbon dioxide produced will be 300 liters.” The atmospheric challenges were summarized as, “Two of the major problems to be investigated in the further development of breathing air systems are first, the improvement of photosynthetic methods and second, the determination of toxic gases accumulating over a period of time from either human or material sources.”
“It has been shown by various workers that it is possible to maintain adult males, in excellent health, on a diet composed solely of chemically pure amino acids, corn oil, dextrose, vitamins and minerals… Although a diet of this type leaves much to be desired insofar as palatability is concerned, highly motivated individuals should be able to use it without difficulty over relatively long periods of time.”
As an example of toxic gases, think about the challenge of analog film development with three chemical baths. How those baths would work in a lunar low gravity environment required more study, but the volatile chemicals should not stay in the lunar base atmosphere for a long time. Therefore, how to maintain a healthy atmosphere was a subject for a lot of study.
Low lunar gravity was not expected to result in any food savings. A diet with 3,000 calories was seen as sufficient. As food is heavy and bulky, various creative and/or radical options were considered: “It has been shown by various workers that it is possible to maintain adult males, in excellent health, on a diet composed solely of chemically pure amino acids, corn oil, dextrose, vitamins and minerals.” In addition: “Although a diet of this type leaves much to be desired insofar as palatability is concerned, highly motivated individuals should be able to use it without difficulty over relatively long periods of time.” Recycling via algae or a hydroponic broadleaf farm was considered. Fish farms were discussed as a possibility as a protein source. Various combinations were qualitatively compared to identify the most nutritious system with lowest mass. Several unknowns, such as the consistency and suitable of lunar soil for farming, could not be addressed due to missing information at the time.
With respect to lunar space suit design, several options were considered.[1,9] First was an ideal suit similar to a pressure garment. While an impediment to mobility, it would allow roughly 70% sea level pressure and free circulation of the atmosphere. Hands can be used as usual via gloves. A collapsible radiation umbrella was considered on top of the helmet to help with the climate control. The second was a more realistic space suit of light metal parts, which looked like a 1950s robot. It would allow enough protection of the user at the price of less mobility and more awkward gestures and work. In particular, gloves were replaced with metal grippers, grabbers, and hooks.
The third and most innovative solution to mobility of the lunar surface was called a “Spheroid suit.” Envision a large ball about three meters across extended with legs to walk, plus forward manipulation grippers and hooks. It was a concept to improve overall personnel protection as well as flexibility of operations and tool handling. Control consoles and oscilloscopes were thought to be installed on the inner surface in front of the operator. Most interestingly, overall flexibility would be increased as the spheroid was only a part of the overall system of tools. This suit was a plug-n-play, modular solution and it could click into a lunar bulldozer for serious digging as well as into a flying lunar transport disc to move around the lunar surface.
Another aspect of the Boeing lunar base study was a full observatory on Moon, which could be used for remote sensing as well as for Earth and astronomical observations. Through military eyes, the observation of missile launches on Earth from the high vantage of the Moon looked attractive. After all, the front side of the Moon always faces Earth via tidal lock. These days, such observations and early warnings are with the SBIRS satellite system.
More details on those observations are in a Boeing report titled “Observations from a lunar scientific base.”[4] The document contains 42 pages and is introduced with the quote, “Some of the advantages and disadvantages of performing scientific observations from a base on the moon are discussed.” Advantages include the stability of a telescope on solid ground while the disadvantages include the cost and harsh environment on the Moon. An artificial satellite in Earth orbit instead of on the Moon is estimated to be 5 to 10 times cheaper.[4]
On the civilian scientific side, lunar telescopes were discussed to observe the universe as they would be free of atmospheric turbulence and hence achieve clearer images. In addition to optical telescope observation, there was a long list of other possible observations such as on selenology and seismology, magnetic fields, nuclear particles, meteoroids, and radio astronomy.
While the use of nuclear explosions for seismic sounding is frowned upon these days, this was a perfectly reasonable instrument in the 1950s and 1960s.
With respect to astronomical observations of the Sun and interplanetary hydrogen, it was mentioned that the base would be expensive but many observations could be done with relatively cheap instruments. An exception would be the cost of a fairly large telescope, which was rationalized as: “Resolution due to such turbulence is limited to 1/4 to 1/2 second of arc, which can be equaled or surpassed by a 20 inch telescope used beyond the atmosphere. It has been estimated that a 50 inch telescope on the moon might be comparable with or even better than the 200 inch telescope on earth in this regard.” More details are discussed in other reports which have not been retrieved.[4]
One of the more interesting quotes regarding the seismic experiments is, “After preliminary travel time curves have been developed an attempt should be made to shoot a seismic wave through the moon to determine the existence and physical state of the core. At this time something will be known of the noise level of the moon and the size of the shot necessary to penetrate through the moon. One antipodal shot, (1 to 10 Kiloton atomic bomb), should give data relative to the existence of a core and the changes of velocity through the moon. A second seismometer placed within a few degrees of the atomic shot would measure the strength of reflections from any deep discontinuities.” While the use of nuclear explosions for seismic sounding is frowned upon these days, this was a perfectly reasonable instrument in the 1950s and 1960s. In the former Soviet Union, more than 100 nuclear explosions were used for deep seismic sounding and related work. Presumably, there are more sensitive, and less radical, instruments these days.[4]
In summary, these pre-Apollo Boeing documents at the crossover of the military and civilian projects provide some fascinating insights into lunar base programs after Sputnik in 1957 and before Apollo in the early 1960s. They show that other Unites States space programs, such the X-15, Dyna Soar, and project Mercury, did not stand alone but shared their findings and insights on human factors in space. The project was managed under great uncertainty as no one had visited the Moon yet and therefore many parameters were just unknown. Digital computers were new and many applications blossomed in the following years. The fundamental insight of Earth observations from space for early warning was spot-on and applicable to this day.
As the nation concentrated on a civilian NASA-led lunar effort via Apollo from May 25, 1961, all of the hard work on this Boeing study was not taken any further at the time. However, it did provide the groundwork for the later 1963 Boeing study “Initial Concept for a Lunar Base” funded by NASA as well as for the later LESA and ALSS.[18] Much remains to be learned and studied from related technical reports. [24]
References
V.E. Montgomery, "Human Factors - Lunar Observatory", Boeing Aircraft, Space Medicine Branch, BAC D7-3046, AD 232 280, 77 pp. September 1959.
"Military Lunar Base Program, S.R. 183 Lunar Observatory Study", Project No. 7987, Task no. 19769, AFBMD TR 60-44, 15 pp, April 1960.
L.R. Magnolia, A.K. Dunlap, "The Lunar Base: A bibliography", STL Research bibliography No. 48, Report No. 9990-6450-KU-OOO, AD 413 433, N63-22777, 96 pp, August 1963,
"SR-183 Lunar Observatory. Observations From A Lunar Scientific Base", Boeing Aircraft, Space Physics branch, BAC D7-2518, AD 232 324, 42 pp. September 1959.
J.F. Hofman, N.E. Classon, "General Reliability And Safety Requirements For The Establishment Of A Lunar Base", BAC D7-2566, 11 pp, September 1959.
V. Houghton, "Nuking the Moon", ISBN 9780143133407, 302 pp, May 2020.
D.A. Day, "Take off and nuke the site from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure…)" , 2007
B.D. Ziarnick, "Tough Tommy's Space Force - General Thomas S. Power and the Air Force Space Program", AD 1030453, 2016.
H.E. Ross, "The Lunar Spacesuit", Journal of The British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Vol. 9 Iss 1., pp. 23-37, 1950.
T.L. Stroup, "Lunar Bases Of The 20th Century: What Might Have Been", Journal of The British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), Vol. 48, pp. 3-10, 1995.
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Hans Dolfing is an independent computer scientist with a passion for spaceflight, software, and history. With thanks to Boeing Archives, Library of Congress, National Archives and Records, NASA HQ Archive, and the National Air and Space Museum. The author is interested in the study of more original technical reports and leads are appreciated via beta_albireo@protonmail.com.
Book Review-Space Piracey
book cover
Review: Space Piracy
by Jeff Foust
Monday, March 24, 2025
Space Piracy: Preparing for a Criminal Crisis in Orbit
by Marc Feldman and Hugh Taylor
Wiley, 2025
hardcover, 256 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-1-394-24020-3
US$30
The term “space piracy” most likely brings to mind science fiction, and probably not great science fiction at that (such as the mid-80s movie The Ice Pirates.) The authors of the new book Space Piracy acknowledge that and even embrace it, but they are very serious about the subject. “Space piracy is a future problem that is starting to show itself in small-scale hacks,” they write, but add that “the probability of space piracy and crime becoming serious issues facing space industry and national security organizations” means it’s time to start planning for it.
One reason that it may be difficult for many to take space piracy seriously is that people immediately turn to analogies to maritime piracy, be it in the Caribbean centuries ago or off the Horn of Africa today, with boarding parties seizing ships and stealing their cargo. Marc Feldman and Hugh Taylor take a more expansive view, including in space piracy other ways to disrupt space operations and profit from it, such as cyberattacks. A space pirate, in that scenario, might not be a pirate in space but rather someone sitting at a computer on the ground hacking into networks.
They consider other forms of piracy that range from stealing cargo in space or on its return to Earth to threatening to destroy space hardware to even seizing crewed facilities in space.
Space cybersecurity is a concern, although very little of it would be considered piracy even by the authors: they differentiate space hacking from space piracy by arguing the latter requires a ransom demand. And they acknowledge that hacking a satellite, for profit or other motivations, is more difficult that going after terrestrial networks. That was the case three years ago when Russia, at the start of its invasion of Ukraine, disrupted satellite communications provided by Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite not by going after the satellite but instead hacking routers on the ground.
Cyberattacks are not the only forms of piracy considered in the book. They consider other forms of piracy that range from stealing cargo in space or on its return to Earth to threatening to destroy space hardware to even seizing crewed facilities in space (see “What will happen in the first space hostage crisis?”, The Space Review, September 23, 2024.) Most of these, they admit, are well in the future—very little cargo is being returned from space now—but they argue could become more realistic in the future if the space economy meets growth forecasts some have projected for the industry.
The authors include some scenarios of various space piracy incidents they foresee happening. However, in some cases the scenarios don’t hold up to scrutiny. One is where a major network is warned, 24 hours before it broadcasts a major sporting event, that pirates have placed a nanosatellite next to the one that network will be using, and will use it to jam transmissions unless paid a “huge ransom.” That scenario requires the reader to believe that a pirate group could develop and launch a satellite, then maneuver it undetected next to the company’s satellite. Even if they did, the broadcaster—which almost certainly is leasing satellite capacity from a major operator like Eutelsat or Intelsat—could simply switch to another satellite, using backup plans it would already have in place in case of ordinary technical difficulties.
Similarly, elsewhere in the book the authors suggest that the collapse of companies that struggled to develop launch vehicles “make these companies easy targets for criminals intent on getting into space.” But they don’t explain how criminals would do that, given how highly regulated launch is and the significant export controls that govern launch technologies. Foreign investment in such companies is subject to major scrutiny and getting approvals to export a launch vehicle to even a close ally like Australia or the United Kingdom is challenging.
Nonetheless, it’s better to be thinking about such problems too early than too late. Space Piracy, at the very least, opens the readers’ eyes to the potential for the types of criminal behavior that might be possible in a future where the space economy is booming and access to space approaches the cost and convenience of maritime transport. One can even imagine a future at, say, the lunar south pole, where the discovery of scarce and valuable frozen volatiles tempts some to steal them. You could call them ice pirates.
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.
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The New Wave Of Asteroid Mining Ventures
Odin
AstroForge’s Odin spacecraft before launch as a secondary payload on the IM-2 mission. The spacecraft suffered technical problems after launch that will keep it from prospecting a near Earth asteroid. (credit: AstroForge)
The new wave of asteroid mining ventures
by Jeff Foust
Monday, March 17, 2025
For Matt Gialich, being scared wasn’t just acceptable. It was a requirement.
“I told everybody in the company that, if you’re not scared when we launch, we went too slow,” Gialich, cofounder and CEO of AstroForge, said in an interview a month before the launch of the company’s Odin spacecraft.
“We made it through our whole test campaign and we’re feeling pretty good about it,” Gialich said. “But anybody that’s flown in space knows feeling good is the first sign that you [expletive] it up.”
AstroForge is among the handful of startups that mark a new wave of asteroid mining ventures, years after companies like Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources faded away. These companies, hoping not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors in their quest to tap into the wealth promised by asteroids, are raising money and building spacecraft to serve as precursors for later mining missions.
In the case of AstroForge, that meant quickly developing its first asteroid reconnaissance mission. The company, which has raised $55 million to date, including $40 million in a Series A round last August, decided to take development of Odin in-house last year after it ran into problems with the company it had hired to build it.
“I thought that the chances of us getting there with the vendor we had selected had gone to zero,” Gialich said last summer, a few months after that insourcing decision. (He did not identify the vendor, but AstroForge had previously disclosed it was working with smallsat manufacturer OrbAstro.)
Development of Odin became a sprint for AstroForge because the company did not want to lose its ride: a secondary payload opportunity on the Falcon 9 launch of the Intuitive Machines IM-2 lunar lander. “I told the team, we’re either on IM-2 or we’re not a company. Those are our two options,” he said last summer.
By late January, Odin was ready. That required many long hours as well as some unconventional testing techniques: AstroForge posted on social media an image of the spacecraft rolled out into a parking lot. “Testing out our long range imagers on the local birds,” it said.
AstroForge was finally ready to disclose the asteroid Odin would visit: 2022 OB5, a near Earth asteroid about 100 meters across thought to be metallic. The company had not publicly disclosed that object, to the consternation of scientists and others in the industry.
“There’s been a lot of pushback on what asteroid we’re going to from the scientific community,” he said before launch, concluding it was now time to work with astronomers. “I would like more information on the asteroid, and a great way to get more information before launch is to announce which one it is for amateur astronomers to go look at.”
If all went well, Odin would fly by 2022 OB5 about 300 days after launch, collecting data to see if the asteroid was, in fact, metallic. If it was, it could become a prime target for future missions planned by AstroForge to mine the asteroid and refine those materials, returning precious metals to Earth.
That is, if all went well. “I am [expletive] terrified,” he said, then describing how he told the team that they should be scared given how fast the company went in building Odin. “We made it through our whole test campaign and we’re feeling pretty good about it. But anybody that’s flown in space knows feeling good is the first sign that you [expletive] it up.”
He argued, though, it was better to try and fail—fail fast, to use the term bandied about by many startups—than to wait years for a perfect spacecraft. “We’ve got to go for it. I respect Planetary Resources a lot, but they didn’t have the balls to try. We’ve got the balls to try. Hopefully our brains are good enough to pull it off.”
On February 26, that Falcon 9 carrying IM-2, Odin, and two other secondary payloads lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center. Soon, AstroForge was running into problems with Odin.
The company originally thought they were having problems with their ground station because while they were getting a carrier signal from the spacecraft, there was no telemetry associated with it. Gialich said in a video update February 28 that AstroForge has run into a variety of issues with those ground stations, from broken equipment to terrestrial interference, in the days leading up to the launch.
Its best guesses are that either the spacecraft couldn’t properly deploy its solar panels and thus had limited power or that it is tumbling and is not able to point its antennas towards Earth.
Another possibility was that Odin was in a “really slow, uncontrolled tumble,” but he appeared to dismiss that in favor of the ground station problems. The company planned steps to get the spacecraft to turn on a power amplifier for its transmitter, he said, with the goal of “getting more data from the spacecraft so we can make sure its state is in a good place.”
However, by March 1 AstroForge had returned to the hypothesis that Odin was in a slow tumble. “There is still a chance that we are going to be able to recover the vehicle,” Gialich said, “but I think we all know that hope is fading.”
On March 6, AstroForge acknowledged that Odin’s mission was over. The company published a detailed, blow-by-blow account of its efforts to contact Odin and the problems it experienced. Its best guesses are that either the spacecraft couldn’t properly deploy its solar panels and thus had limited power (a possibility detected in pre-launch testing), or that it is tumbling and is not able to point its antennas towards Earth.
AstroForge is unbowed by the failure. The company says it spent just $3.5 million on Odin and is already working on its next spacecraft, Vestri, targeted for launch as a secondary on the IM-3 mission Intuitive Machines plans to launch as soon as early 2026. Vestri will be bigger with improved propulsion and avionics. The company also plans to hire “principal-level” engineers with spacecraft experience to augment a workforce that had more experience on launch vehicles.
Karman+
Karman+ plans to launch its first asteroid mission, called High Frontier, as soon as 2027. (credit: Karman+)
Mining asteroids for water and propellant
As AstroForge was preparing for the launch of Odin, another startup announced its interest in asteroid mining. Karman+ said February 19 it raised $20 million in seed funding from several investors for its work on asteroid mining missions.
While AstroForge is focused on mining metallic asteroids for precious metals, Karman+ is looking for other classes of asteroids that might harbor hydrated minerals. The company wants to mine those asteroids and extract the water from them.
Teun van den Dries, co-founder and CEO of Karman+, studied aerospace engineering in college but went into software, founding a company that did data analysis for commercial real estate. He kept tabs, though, on the industry from the sidelines.
“The prior generation of asteroid mining companies were friends that I cheered on from the sidelines, and watched them try and then subsequently collapse,” he said in an interview. “This will happen in my lifetime. Someone will make this work.”
After he sold his first company, he turned his attention to asteroid mining. “I’ve thought about this is as, what is the highest leverage thing I can do with my time?” he said. “This is definitely one of them. If this works, it will be transformational for both the space economy as well as Earth’s economy.”
“I’ve thought about this is as, what is the highest leverage thing I can do with my time?” van den Dries said. “This is definitely one of them.”
Karman+—the name, he said, is based on the approach of harnessing space resources, those above the 100-kilometer Kármán Line, to do things in space not possible today—is working on its first mission, proposed for launch in 2027. It will go to an asteroid and attempt excavate material on the “kilogram scale,” or much more than the grams of samples collected by Japan’s Hayabusa missions or NASA’s OSIRIS-REx.
Like AstroForge, the company has moved much of its spacecraft development in-house. “We initially figured that we’d be able to outsource roughly 80% of the spacecraft. In the last two years, that has shifted to roughly 20%,” he said, citing difficulties in getting components. The funding the company has raised is more than enough to complete the spacecraft, which van den Dries says should cost less than current estimates of $17 million.
That first mission won’t attempt to bring any asteroid material back to Earth. “We optimized this mission to be low cost and capable of doing as many of the tests and things that we want to do at the asteroid,” he said, including testing navigation and instruments as well as gathering asteroid material.
The company is focused on water because that can serve as fuel—either on its own or broken down into hydrogen and oxygen—for refueling spacecraft. The problem, though, is that very few spacecraft use such propellants, preferring hydrazine or other storable propellants for chemical thrusters or xenon and other noble gases for electric thrusters.
The approach Karman+ is taking is to be the initial customer for that asteroid-derived water. “Our spacecraft is, in a very literal sense, dual use. We have a mining configuration, which is the one that is going out to the asteroids,” van den Dries said. “But we also have what is effectively, if we swap out the excavation equipment for a grappling arm, a very effective tow truck.”
“There’s a debate to be had about whether space mining is legal. We can discuss whether it’s technologically feasible, economical, within our jurisdiction, or if it’s even safe,” said Rep. Dexter.
That tow-truck version of the Karman+ spacecraft would serve as a life-extension vehicle, similar to what SpaceLogistics, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary, has been doing for several years with its Mission Extension Vehicles. The spacecraft would attach to a satellite and take over maneuvering.
“Rather than refuel the customer spacecraft, we refuel our own tow truck, which is a system that we control end-to-end,” he said. “Because we can refill our own spacecraft, it drastically reduces our internal cost for these kinds of missions.”
He dismissed competition from other orbital transfer vehicles, including those that might take advantage of the low-cost launch promised by SpaceX’s Starship. “That would be true if cheap launch existed. There's no such thing,” he argued. “SpaceX does a great job marketing and then raises their prices by 10% every year, and has done that every year for the last decade.”
He added that he did not see Starship as a threat for GEO missions since that vehicle requires refueling to get to GEO. “We have an order of magnitude cost difference in our benefit because of the refueling architecture that is in a GEO configuration impossible to beat,” he said, adding that Karman+ did not plan to serve the low Earth orbit market.
Space mining vs. Spaceballs
Asteroid mining has gotten renewed attention from Congress as well, with the oversight subcommittee of the House National Resources Committee holding a hearing on the topic February 25.
“What seems like a far-off concept is no longer so,” said Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), chairman of the subcommittee. “Resource extraction in space is right around the corner.”
Much of the 90-minute hearing, though, had little to do with asteroid mining. One of the witnesses, Richard Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, acknowledged he had little expertise in asteroid mining, but instead discussed that, if asteroid mining was supported with public money, the taxpayers should get a return on that investment. He also discussed conflicts of interest where government officials might benefit personally from public expenditures.
That included Elon Musk, the de facto head of the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency while also remaining CEO of SpaceX. “Mr. Musk can’t be involved with SpaceX and having anything to do with space mining in the United States government. That would just be flat-out corrupt,” he said. (The US government has, so far, not made any sizable direct investments in any space mining ventures, whether or not they are connected to SpaceX.)
There were two executives on the panel representing space resources companies. Steven Place, senior policy advisor for AstroForge, offered several recommendations, ranging from having the government be the “offtaker of last resort” for space mining companies and for NASA to provide companies with more access to the Deep Space Network for their asteroid mining missions.
Saurav Shroff, CEO of Starpath, offered his own recommendations on topics such as increasing the speed of launch licensing and modernizing planetary protection rules. He said his company is working on technology to create a “rocket propellant refinery” on the Moon. He claimed that system would be ready to launch by the middle of next year “that is twice as powerful as the most powerful satellite ever made, the International Space Station, at a fraction of the cost.” He didn’t elaborate on that system and in what ways it was more “powerful” than the ISS, or how it would get it to the Moon. The company has announced only $12 million in funding to date.
The committee members didn’t seem interested in the recommendations from Place or Shroff. “There’s a debate to be had about whether space mining is legal. We can discuss whether it’s technologically feasible, economical, within our jurisdiction, or if it’s even safe,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-OR), ranking member of the subcommittee.
“But the key question for today is whether investing in such an expensive venture at this time is necessary to meet our critical mineral needs. The answer to that question is decidedly no,” she concluded.
“What I've noticed about aerospace is it's still full of a bunch of people that are low risk individuals,” Gialich said. “We're the one that is saying, like, we think we can take more risk and we think we can actually change the world.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), ranking member of the full committee, offered even sharper criticism, noting that space mining did not appear to be in the jurisdiction of the committee and that other issues, like cuts to federal agencies within the committee’s jurisdiction, were more important. “For those who have been longing to a sequel to the movie Spaceballs, this is your lucky day,” he said. “For everyone else, we can marvel at just how tone-deaf House Republicans are.”
He argued the companies testifying were seeking federal subsidies for their work through NASA support and a “price floor” for space resources they mine. “It does take some space balls, in this moment, to come in and ask for federal money.”
Even a Republican member was skeptical of the utility of asteroid mining. “Why is it that we are literally looking to outer space for these minerals, minerals we’re blessed with right here in the United States of America?” asked Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN).
He asked one witness, Misael Cabrera of the University of Arizona, how much cheaper it would be to obtain the same amount of minerals—121 grams—as OSIRIS-REx did from the asteroid Bennu for $1.2 billion. “I can’t, frankly, do that math in my head,” Cabrera responded, but acknowledged it would be “much more inexpensive.”
Congress might be skeptical of asteroid mining, but true believers like AstroForge’s Gialich are pressing ahead. “What I've noticed about aerospace is it's still full of a bunch of people that are low risk individuals,” he said in the company’s post about the end of the Odin mission. He contrasted it to AI conferences where people are “high on drugs” and claiming they’re going to “make God.”
“And you’re like, where are those people in the aerospace community? We’re that person, right? We're the one that is saying, like, we think we can take more risk and we think we can actually change the world.”
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.
Is The Moon In America's Future?
lunar base
Exploring the Moon has value on its own, and can also help accelerate missions to Mars. (credit: NASA)
Is the Moon in America’s future?
Unpacking the strategic debate
by Bhavya Lal
Monday, March 17, 2025
As the current administration contemplates America’s future in human spaceflight, it faces a crucial strategic choice: should we return to the Moon first, or push directly for Mars? This critical decision will shape not just the future of space exploration, but humanity’s path to bringing the solar system into our sphere. Climate change, pandemics, and other existential risks make expanding beyond Earth increasingly critical. Yet reasonable observers disagree sharply on the best path forward.
The choice between these approaches will determine not just where humans next land, but how quickly and safely we can establish a permanent presence beyond Earth.
Mars-direct advocates argue that modern technology has made lunar steppingstones unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. Why spend precious years and billions of dollars developing lunar infrastructure when we could invest those resources in reaching Mars sooner? The Red Planet, they contend, offers humanity’s best chance for a self-sustaining civilization beyond Earth.
Moon-first proponents counter that skipping lunar development would be dangerously premature. They argue that establishing lunar operations would accelerate, not delay, humanity’s path to Mars. Beyond the Mars debate, they contend that the Moon presents compelling opportunities in its own right. Commercial interests see potential for profitable ventures from tourism to resource extraction. National security experts view lunar presence as essential for preventing strategic competitors from dominating space. The choice between these approaches will determine not just where humans next land, but how quickly and safely we can establish a permanent presence beyond Earth.
The Moon’s strategic value
For many advocates of the Moon first approach, the Moon represents more than a steppingstone to Mars: it’s a critical arena for economic development and national security. China’s accelerating lunar program and declaration of space as a “strategic frontier” make establishing a sustained lunar presence an urgent national priority. Control of cislunar space and lunar resources—as and when they are discovered and extracted—will shape the balance of power in space for decades to come.
Commercial opportunities on the Moon don’t require Mars justification. According to advocates, space tourism, resource extraction, and manufacturing in lunar gravity present business cases, however far in the future. Private sector innovation is already driving down costs while increasing capabilities. These commercial activities can create a self-sustaining lunar economy that advances both lunar and Mars development.
A parallel path forward
The Moon-versus-Mars debate often presents a false choice. Modern launch capabilities and commercial innovation enable a more nuanced approach: using the Moon as a proving ground while simultaneously developing Mars-specific technologies. This parallel development strategy could accelerate progress toward both destinations.
Mars-specific technology development could proceed without waiting for lunar validation. Systems unique to Mars, such as entry, descen,t and landing on the Martian surface and long-duration life support, require focused development independent of lunar operations. Commercial approaches can drive rapid innovation for both destinations simultaneously.
The Moon offers two distinct advantages: as a testing site for Mars-relevant technologies and as a strategic destination in its own right. Some lunar systems will specifically support Mars development, while others will serve lunar-specific commercial and security needs. This dual-track approach ensures lunar investment serves multiple national objectives.
Why the Moon accelerates Mars settlement
Critics argue that lunar missions delay Mars development. The reality is counterintuitive but clear: establishing lunar operations will speed up Mars settlement. First, the Moon provides rapid iteration cycles for mission-critical systems. While Mars-analog testing on Earth has value, the Moon offers real partial gravity, actual deep space radiation, and genuine vacuum conditions just three days away. When systems fail—and they will fail—we can recover, examine, and refly them within months, not years. This rapid iteration dramatically accelerates technology development.
The argument that Moon-first approaches waste resources ignores the cost of failure at Mars.
Second, lunar operations force us to solve key Mars challenges sooner rather than later. Resource extraction, power generation, dust mitigation, and radiation protection must all work in actual space conditions. The Moon’s harsh environment, while different from Mars, is in many ways more challenging. Systems that work reliably on the Moon will adapt more easily to Mars than vice versa.
Third, the Moon enables parallel development of Mars technologies. Modern launch systems can support both lunar and Mars missions. Each lunar landing provides valuable data for Mars entry, descent, and landing systems. Even resource extraction test on the Moon can advance Mars ISRU technology. We’re not choosing between the Moon and Mars: we’re using the Moon to accelerate Mars development.
Critical to this approach is setting firm timelines for transitioning focus to Mars. For NASA in particular, lunar development must not become an endless cycle of expansion, unless led by the private sector for its own use. Each lunar mission should validate specific Mars-relevant technologies, with clear metrics for when sufficient testing is complete. Commercial partnerships can accelerate development at both destinations, leveraging private sector innovation while maintaining strategic focus.
The economics of speed
The argument that Moon-first approaches waste resources ignores the cost of failure at Mars. Yes, reusable rockets dramatically reduce launch costs. But launch is only part of the Mars challenge. Life support, resource utilization, power systems, and habitats must all work perfectly for years without support. Testing these systems on the Moon may seem expensive until compared to the cost of losing a Mars mission.
Modern commercial approaches and reusable rockets don’t eliminate the need for lunar testing: they make it more feasible. The same systems reducing Mars mission costs also make lunar operations more affordable. We can leverage these cost reductions to conduct more lunar tests, further accelerating Mars technology development.
Strategic imperatives
The Moon provides immediate national security advantages independent of Mars considerations. With China’s accelerating lunar program and Russia’s revanchist space ambitions, the Moon represents a crucial theater for great power competition. A sustained lunar presence enables monitoring and potentially controlling cislunar space—the volume between Earth and Moon that will become increasingly critical as space activity expands.
The Moon’s position grants unique strategic capabilities that cannot be replicated elsewhere. From lunar facilities, we can maintain continuous surveillance of Earth and cislunar space, while controlling critical orbital positions and Lagrange points. This positioning enables comprehensive space domain awareness and defense of critical space infrastructure. Early development of space resources before competitors arrive ensures strategic advantage, while providing protection for expanding commercial activities. These capabilities form an integrated framework for securing American interests in space.
Commercial opportunities
The Moon enables near-term commercial ventures independent of Mars plans. Lunar proximity allows businesses to establish revenue-generating operations within years rather than decades. Space tourism and lunar excursions represent immediate opportunities, while mining of rare earth elements and precious metals offers longer-term potential. Additional ventures include helium-3 extraction for use on Earth, manufacturing in lunar gravity, and testing services for space systems. The development of lunar transport, logistics services, and space-based solar power for lunar use creates a comprehensive economic ecosystem.
Success demands a dual focus: advancing Mars capabilities while developing lasting lunar infrastructure.
These commercial activities can create self-sustaining business models that don’t require government subsidies or Mars-forward justification. Commercial innovation will drive down costs while increasing capabilities for both lunar operations and Mars development. The proximity of the Moon allows companies to establish practical business models with near-term returns, attracting private investment that accelerates both lunar and Mars capabilities.
Scientific and observational advantages
Beyond its role as a technology proving ground, the Moon offers unique scientific capabilities that Mars cannot match. The Moon’s far side, permanently shielded from Earth’s radio emissions, provides an unparalleled platform for deep-space observations. This radio-quiet environment enables astronomical discoveries impossible from Earth or Mars, from exploring the early universe to searching for signals from distant exoplanets. These capabilities further justify lunar investment while developing Mars technologies.
Risk and reality
The Moon offers more than just quick emergency returns. It provides essential experience for crews operating in partial gravity, dealing with radiation, and managing resources in space conditions. This real space experience builds crucial operational knowledge for Mars missions. Critical technologies prove themselves in actual space conditions where failures have recoverable consequences, with each lunar success building confidence in Mars systems. Lunar geology, resource extraction, and construction techniques provide essential data for Mars operations, while the Moon’s harsh environment often presents worse challenges than Mars, driving more robust solutions.
Program continuity presents another crucial advantage of the Moon-first approach. Recent history shows how shifting space priorities every four to eight years undermines workforce morale and wastes billions in abandoned development. The current Moon program, unlike previous efforts, has maintained bipartisan support across administrations. Pivoting away would repeat this costly cycle of program cancellations and restarts, setting back both lunar and Mars exploration.
A strategic path forward
Success demands a dual focus: advancing Mars capabilities while developing lasting lunar infrastructure. Some lunar investments will specifically target Mars requirements, while others will support permanent lunar presence for commercial and security purposes. The key is distinguishing between Mars-enabling technologies and lunar-specific infrastructure needed for sustained presence.
Government efforts should concentrate on developing common technologies that support both destinations, while securing strategic capabilities needed for national security. This includes establishing basic infrastructure that enables commercial development and creating international frameworks for space resource utilization. These foundational elements ensure sustainable development of both lunar and Mars capabilities.
Commercial ventures should take the lead in developing revenue-generating lunar operations and driving innovative technology development. Private sector leadership in transportation, logistics services, and resource extraction will accelerate development while ensuring economic sustainability. This division of responsibilities leverages the strengths of both government and commercial sectors.
The choice isn’t between lunar presence and Mars development: both are essential for America’s space future.
The pace of development is equally critical. Missions must maintain rapid iteration cycles that build compounding knowledge and capabilities. This requires a flexible architecture that can incorporate new technologies and lessons learned without waiting for perfect solutions. Commercial capabilities should be leveraged to support both lunar and Mars objectives, creating a sustainable economic foundation for deep space exploration. By treating the government’s lunar operations as a technology accelerator rather than a final destination, we can build momentum toward Mars while delivering tangible benefits in the near term.
The cost of delay vs. the cost of failure
Mars-direct advocates correctly emphasize the urgency of becoming multiplanetary. However, they underestimate the delay a failed Mars mission and loss of human life would cause. A Moon-first approach that prevents one failed Mars mission more than justifies its timeline.
The development of aviation provides a useful parallel. Early attempts to achieve powered flight often ended in failure. The Wright Brothers succeeded by conducting rapid, incremental tests where failures were survivable. The Moon offers this same advantage for Mars technology development.
Conclusion
The Moon represents both an essential step toward Mars and a vital destination in its own right. Its value stems not just from enabling Mars settlement, but from its strategic position, resource potential, and commercial opportunities. A sustained lunar presence serves multiple national objectives: advancing Mars capabilities, ensuring space security, and fostering commercial space development.
The choice isn’t between lunar presence and Mars development: both are essential for America’s space future. A well-designed lunar program can accelerate Mars settlement while establishing lasting commercial presence and ensuring strategic control of cislunar space. For those serious about establishing humanity on Mars, the Moon isn’t a detour: it’s the expressway to successful Mars settlement.
Dr. Bhavya Lal is the former Acting Chief Technologist and Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy, and Strategy at NASA.
Book Review: Lunar Commerce
book cover
Review: Lunar Commerce
by Jeff Foust
Monday, March 17, 2025
Lunar Commerce: A Primer
by Derek Webber
Springer, 2024
hardcover, 208 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-3-031-53420-1
US$39.99
Commercial activities are off to a shaky start on the Moon. So far only one company can claim a fully successful (or reasonably close) lunar landing: Firefly Aerospace, whose Blue Ghost 1 lander signed off Sunday night shortly after sunset at its Mare Crisium landing site. Israel’s SpaceIL and Japan’s ispace crashed attempting to landing on the Moon (a second ispace lander is enroute for a landing in June), Astrobotic’s Peregrine suffered a propulsion malfunction that kept it from attempting a landing, and Intuitive Machines’ two landers both landed on the Moon but ended up on their sides, with its second mission earlier this month causing the mission to end barely 12 hours after landing.
Nonetheless, commercial ventures will play a critical role in plans to return to and stay on the Moon. NASA is relying on commercial services not just for robotic landers but also crewed landers by Blue Origin and SpaceX, allowing the companies to offer those landers to any other customers. The same approach is being used for lunar spacesuits, rovers, and communications services. NASA is betting that it will not be the only customers, and perhaps someday not even the largest, customer for those lunar services.
But what exactly is the market for lunar activities? That’s the focus of Lunar Commerce, a book by Derek Webber, who led an effort called the Lunar Commerce Portfolio that attempted to define commercial lunar activities and estimate their value.
In the most optimistic of four scenarios, one where the Moon is “fully open for business” with sustained government and commercial presence, annual revenue could reach $31 billion.
Webber starts the book with some background about lunar activities, crediting the current surge in interest in commercial activities on the Moon to SpaceX and the Google Lunar X Prize. SpaceX, of course, for its efforts in reducing launch costs, enabling activities that might previously have required a government budget. The prize, meanwhile, was not won, but triggered a surge of interest in commercial lunar landings, leading to companies like Astrobotic and ispace that are today flying lunar missions.
Much of the book steps through the analysis that the Lunar Commerce Portfolio, a project affiliated with the Moon Village Association, performed to identify lunar markets, applications, and values. They range from transportation and infrastructure on the Moon to mining, manufacturing, and even tourism.
And how big could those markets be? Webber says that in the most optimistic of four scenarios, one where the Moon is “fully open for business” with sustained government and commercial presence, annual revenue could reach $31 billion, with 80% of that coming from commercial activities, in a “Mature Phase” some time after 2030. “It does not seem unreasonable in any obvious way,” he concludes. “It is what it is: the outcome from all of our data, assumptions, and understandings.”
That amount is not trivial, but it is also relatively modest. The satellite industry reported $285 billion in revenue in 2023, according to a study by the Satellite Industry Association, an industry group. That included $110 billion in satellite services like communications and $150 billion in ground equipment. (The actual construction and launch of satellites remain small fractions of the overall industry, which has been true for many years.)
The bigger question, one beyond the scope of this book, is whether lunar commerce can be profitable at those projected revenues and provide investors with an acceptable return on investment. If it can, the Moon might well be open to business for those interested in its resources or for hosting private travelers. If not, companies will need to continue to rely on NASA and other governments, motivated by factors other than the bottom line, to pursue their lunar dreams.
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.
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Jared Isaacman-The High School Dropout Who Wil Lead NASA
United States | Top desk
Jared Isaacman, the high-school dropout who will lead NASA
The entrepreneur is a foe of the “Old Space” establishment
Jared Isaacman
Photograph: Getty Images
Mar 13th 2025
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In 2021 Jared Isaacman, the man soon to become NASA’s boss, bought a 30-second ad at the Super Bowl. Mr Isaacman—a boyish-looking 42-year-old billionaire, jet pilot and one-time owner of the world’s biggest private air force—had paid for four seats on one of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Viewers were told that one lucky member of the public willing to donate to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee, for which the mission eventually raised over $250m, would be able to join him and the rest of the crew.
Space tourism is nothing new. But Mr Isaacman was no mere dilettante on a joyride. He is a space enthusiast who believes humanity’s destiny is to colonise the solar system, and who is happy to spend his own money to help make it happen. In September last year he was back on the launchpad for the first mission of his private “Polaris” programme, designed to lay the foundations for exploring the Moon and Mars. Polaris was due to culminate, sometime later in the decade, with the first crewed flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket, which is designed to ferry humans to Mars.
All that is on hold for now: his new job means Mr Isaacman will be stuck flying a desk for the foreseeable future. Like many of Mr Trump’s appointments, he is an outsider to the agency he will be in charge of. Unlike some of them, though, he is not a conspiracy theorist or bomb-throwing MAGA radical. In interviews he comes across as thoughtful and diplomatic. But he is likely to push through big changes at a NASA that has devolved into a vehicle for funnelling pork to contractors as much as an enterprise dedicated to exploring space.
Mr Isaacman grew up in New Jersey. The youngest by eight years of four siblings, he was jealous of his brothers’ and sisters’ adult freedoms while he was still stuck in school. As he told The Green Dot, an aviation podcast, in 2024, “I had to raise my hand to go to the bathroom….they were out living their lives.” He left school as soon as he could, at 16, for a job doing IT support at a payment-processing firm. Mr Isaacman soon realised he could greatly streamline the clunky process of setting retailers up with credit-card terminals, and left to start a payments firm of his own from his parents’ basement. These days, Shift4 Payments is worth $8bn and employs around 4,000 people.
The teenage entrepreneur worked himself hard. One day Mr Isaacman woke up after falling asleep at his keyboard and decided he needed a hobby. A fan of the film “Top Gun” and a keen player of flight-simulator video games, he drove to a local airport and signed up for flying lessons, starting in propeller-driven Cessnas before graduating to jets.
In 2010 he helped found the Black Diamond Jet Team, an aerobatics group that performs at air shows around America. These days his pride and joy is a Soviet-built MiG-29, a Mach-2 fighter jet which he bought from Paul Allen, one of Microsoft’s founders. The hobby spawned another business, too. Draken International, which was sold to Blackstone in 2020, uses a fleet of surplus military jets to give America’s air force adversaries to train against.
His experience as an entrepreneur will inform what Mr Isaacman does with NASA. Like many space enthusiasts, he dislikes the “Old Space” establishment: big firms such as Lockheed Martin or Boeing, which receive billions from NASA to build rockets. As he told MECO, another space podcast, last year, the cost-plus contracts those firms are awarded, and a congressional tendency to treat them as job-creation programmes, mean “they are incentivised to accomplish very little.”
He puts his faith instead in a newer generation of entrepreneurial space startups: firms like Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace and Stoke Space. Many of these have been nurtured by NASA, which has given them fixed-price contracts to do things like fly cargo to the International Space Station or take scientific probes to the Moon. The standout success has been SpaceX, which has slashed launch costs, pioneered reusable rockets and built the Starlink satellite-broadband service.
Assuming the Senate confirms him, Mr Isaacman is likely to double down on support for the insurgents. NASA’s Old Space-powered Artemis Moon programme will probably get chopped back. The Boeing-made SLS rocket at its heart might be scrapped altogether. He is particularly enthused about Starship. Its combination of mass production, a huge payload and a bargain-basement price could, he has said, “open up the entire solar system”.
Turbulence ahead
But it will not just be boldly going where no man has gone before. Rumours in Washington are that Mr Trump’s first budget will require huge cuts—numbers up to 50% have been mooted—in NASA’s science budget. Those are likely to fall most heavily on climate research, long a bugbear among Republicans. But they could also require shuttering things like space telescopes and Mars probes. Reworking NASA’s human spaceflight projects while managing a depressed and fearful science directorate would tax even the most experienced administrator.
The biggest question is the extent to which Mr Isaacman will prove to be his own man, rather than simply a cipher for the views of Elon Musk, SpaceX’s boss, with whom he is closely associated. The idea that NASA could benefit from working even more closely with young, hungry companies is probably correct. But Mr Musk, whose role as one of Mr Trump’s closest advisers has made him a divisive figure, stands to benefit personally. Mr Isaacman has said he finds flying jets a good way to escape the stresses of life. Flying desks may have the opposite effect. ■
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Top Secret Spy Satellites
ELINT images
Twenty HEXAGON satellites were launched from California between 1971 and 1986, with one failure. HEXAGON was a big photo-reconnaissance satellite, but often carried Program 989 subsatellites that were deployed in orbit. (credit: Peter Hunter)
Stars in the sky: The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites from the 1970s to the 21st century
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, March 10, 2025
In 1963, the Air Force launched the first “hitchhiker” off the side of a larger satellite. This began a secretive program that lasted more than 40 years under a variety of names and designations. The satellites, about the size of a large suitcase, were festooned with antennas and spun rapidly as they orbited the Earth, sweeping their antennas over the ground and gathering radar and other signals, so-called electronic intelligence, or ELINT. They usually recorded the signals for later transmission to the ground, but occasionally directly re-transmitted them to a ground station.
Satellites with names like URSALA, RAQUEL, FARRAH, GLORIA, and CARRIE have only recently been declassified, with significant information about them released only in the past two months, including the disclosure of previously secret space shuttle payloads.
For the first decade, the various satellites under this program chased whatever new ELINT targets appeared and were of interest to the intelligence community. The satellites were designed to be inexpensive and simple enough to be developed in a year or less in response to new threats. Their payloads were often bespoke designs, built only once or twice before they were replaced by something else.
But by the 1970s, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which managed the program, began to standardize the satellites and give them an operational mission supporting military forces around the world. Satellites with names like URSALA, RAQUEL, FARRAH, GLORIA, and CARRIE have only recently been declassified, with significant information about them released only in the past two months, including the disclosure of previously secret space shuttle payloads. These satellites represented a profound change in the collection of intelligence data from orbit, a change from serving relatively exclusive “national” leadership to supporting tactical forces of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. They brought the wizard war of space-based electronic intelligence to the warfighter.
ELINT images
During the 1970s and 1980s, subsatellites were deployed off the sides of large HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellites. (credit: NRO)
Program 989 and Mission 7300
The first of the small satellites were colloquially called “hitchhikers,” but Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, which built them, referred to them as Program 11, or P-11 satellites, and this designation seems to have been used by officials throughout the 1960s and 1970s as generic shorthand for the small satellites, even when they had official program designations and specific names. In 1965/66, the P-11 program was redesignated P-770B, then Program 989.[1] However, as fewer individual satellites were procured over the years, it appears from available documentation that officials often referred to the individual satellites rather than the program they were part of. The Program 989 satellites continued flying even after a larger series of signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites known as Program 770 ended with the last launch in 1972.[2]
By the 1970s, the intelligence community began using the TALENT-KEYHOLE designation “Mission 7300” to refer to the collection of radar signals and their geolocation data by these low Earth orbit satellites. Mission 7100 referred to the ocean surveillance mission performed by the PARCAE satellites. Mission 7200 referred to payloads hosted on other satellites, such as the AFTRACK electronic intelligence systems carried on many CORONA satellites in the 1960s.[3] By the 1980s there was increasing discussion within the intelligence community of merging both Missions 7100 and 7300 by developing new satellites incorporating both of their capabilities.
During the 1960s, the satellites often lasted only a few months in orbit. Their lifetimes were often limited by their low orbits. Satellites with large antennas, such as large low-frequency spiral antennas or large flex-rib dish antennas, were dragged down by the thin atmosphere at their altitudes. It was typical for satellites to last one to four years before they burned up in the atmosphere, although MABELI was still operating when it burned up after seven years and TOP HAT II was still functioning when it burned up at six years.[4] The Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects office, located in Los Angeles, was the NRO’s West Coast organization responsible for managing Mission 7300, among other projects. Usually only referred to as SAFSP and mostly manned by Air Force officers, SAFSP sought to increase the lifetimes and capabilities of the satellites so that fewer were required to perform the missions. Improved electronics made this possible.[5]
Throughout the 1960s the satellites had names like PUNDIT, SAVANT, SOUSEA, and SAMPAN that were obscure references to people working in the intelligence field, or sometimes even inside jokes or puns. The program managers (all men) were told that they needed to avoid possible hints about the satellites’ missions, and so they decided to name them after movie actresses.[6]
Because the P-11s were carried into orbit alongside other, bigger, photo-reconnaissance satellites, the satellites were inevitably compromises. They were limited in size, mass, power, capability, and cost. Nevertheless, they were designed to pack as much capability into a small size as possible. They were notable for sporting several dishes around their periphery, most of which were spring-loaded to deploy using centrifugal force.
ELINT images
Radars produce mainbeams and weaker sidelobes. The Program 989 satellites usually had the ability to detect both, and in some cases they could determine fine-grain data about the signals, enabling the development of jamming and spoofing capabilities. (credit: NRO)
Radars produce main beams that radiate forward of the emitter, and side lobes that spread out to the emitter’s sides. The main beam is obviously the most powerful part of the emission, but it is focused in a specific direction and can only be intercepted if a collector such as a satellite antenna travels through the emission cone. The side lobes spread out over a much larger area but are fainter. A satellite with parabolic dishes can collect the fainter side lobes, whereas main beams can be collected in low Earth orbit without large dish antennas if the satellite travels through them. Thus, even though the Program 989/Mission 7300 satellites were not particularly large, their dish antennas provided a capability for intercepting faint, and more prolific, radar side lobes.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the NRO was also launching several new classes of larger signals intelligence satellites to much higher orbits, including geosynchronous orbits. Those satellites were designed to collect Soviet microwave communications, missile and rocket telemetry, and other signals. But they were primarily restricted to northern hemisphere targets, for the satellites in highly elliptical orbits, and to eastern hemisphere targets if they were located in geosynchronous orbit over the eastern hemisphere. In other words, a signals intelligence satellite located in the eastern hemisphere to monitor communications from Moscow could not also cover targets over Central America. Program 989 low Earth orbiting satellites were still necessary for intercepting radar signals in large part because the satellites were closer to their targets and covered the entire globe from their polar orbits. The low Earth orbiting satellites also could serve new users, not just the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency and the “national” level customers of their intelligence like the White House and senior military leadership.
ELINT images
Four URSALA satellites were launched during the 1970s. The ability of URSALA to provide data to mobile electronics vans deployed in the field made these satellites valuable for tactical users. Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities (TENCAP) became an important intelligence mission. (credit: NRO)
URSALA and the dawn of TENCAP
The Vietnam War played an important part in causing a redirection in the low Earth orbit signals intelligence program. In the mid to late 1960s, the NRO had launched more than a dozen P-11 satellites designed to intercept anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radar signals. But by 1969, hundreds of American aircraft had been shot down by missiles over Vietnam, and for several years overhead imagery had detected a Soviet radar system deployed in the field, but no electronic intercepts had been made (the identity of this radar is still deleted from declassified documents.) In addition, the existing satellites lacked the capability to search for Ku-band emitters in the 12-to-18-gigahertz range. Finally, radar experts expected the Soviet Union to begin deploying “double-agile radars” that could simultaneously frequency hop from pulse-to-pulse and jitter in pulse repetition interval (the time between pulses) from pulse-to-pulse. A new capability would be required to detect these emerging radar threats.[7]
The lack of specific knowledge about these emerging high-threat signals produced a set of requirements that could not be satisfied by a single system using the technology available at the time but led to the creation of two new satellite systems: URSALA and RAQUEL.
“Back in the early 1970’s the new mission was to get data directly to the commander on the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area). I had a payload with possibilities if it could be ‘trailerized.’ We decided to go for it but needed a catchy name, so we used DRACULA…Direct Readout and Collection ULA (‘ULA’ was the three-letter shorthand for the URSALA payload).”
URSALA was designed to collect signals from double-agile radars in bands from 2 to 12 gigahertz. It searched radar side lobes, not their main beams. It was considered a “general search” system. RAQUEL was designed not to search from horizon-to-horizon, but to maximize the intercept time on relatively short slant range targets by using a spinning pencil beam (i.e. the narrow beam in which a signal could be detected by the satellite.)[8]: “Since the frequency of the signals was not known, it was necessary to develop a collection system capable of searching a wide frequency range. A means of associating the signals definitely with the [radar] was also required, as was a capability to measure technical parameters precisely.” The RAQUEL satellites required more time to develop than URSALA due to their increased complexity.[9]
Four URSALA satellites were deployed from HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellites during the 1970s. They were placed into approximately 509-kilometer (275-nautical-mile) circular orbits. They were designed to detect pulsed emitters primarily within the Soviet Union. URSALA represented a change in design philosophy for the NRO: rather than the custom approach that was used for many of the dozens of satellites produced during the 1960s, SAFSP sought to standardize the satellites and their payloads. URSALA satellites also had some ability to detect and geolocate ships at sea, although this was not a primary mission.
URSALA I and II were launched in 1972 and 1973 and designed for general search and electronic order of battle for pulsed and continuous wave emitters with a frequency range of 2 to 12 gigahertz. They weighed 178 kilograms (393 pounds) and had nine-month design lifetimes. URSALA I ultimately lasted 70 months, and URSALA II lasted 61 months.[10]
Although URSALA (and later RAQUEL) was intended to detect signals from surface-to-air missile radars that were deployed tactically, at least at first the satellites were serving national intelligence requirements, meaning that their data was evaluated in places like the National Security Agency, and then eventually used to better protect tactical aircraft. Tactical forces would indirectly benefit from the intelligence, but they would not receive it.
However, the 1973 war in the Middle East prompted the use of the satellites for “operational support,” and the success of the URSALA I and II satellites in this role stimulated the development of techniques for more rapid data processing, both on the satellites and on mobile ground terminals.[11] This was apparently the beginning of a new mission for these small satellites, the evolution from their use primarily in support of strategic intelligence gathering to providing data that could be directly used by military forces deployed around the world—electronic intelligence order of battle (EOB), or an indication of the types and locations of enemy deployed electronic emitters. For instance, detecting Soviet SA-6 mobile surface to air missile radars in a new location provided an indication that the missiles were likely protecting a moving armor column, or a high-value target like a field headquarters.
By the mid-1970s, Army and Air Force tactical users were becoming interested in directly accessing the electronic intelligence data collected by the low Earth orbiting satellites, bypassing the NSA. They funded a program called RTIP which in 1977 consisted of two vans—a mobile antenna van and a processing van—that demonstrated the feasibility of direct downlink and on-board processing operation using data from the URSALA III satellite.[12] This was the beginning of what became known as Tactical Exploitation of National CAPabilities, or TENCAP. As more customers began using the data produced by the satellites, they exerted a pull on NRO requirements (see “From the sky to the mud: TENCAP and adapting national reconnaissance systems to tactical operations,” The Space Review, June 19, 2023.)
After RTIP, the NRO’s West Coast office, along with the US Army, developed the Interim Tactical ELINT Processor (ITEP) vans, which were first deployed in 1979. A follow-on van, known as the Tactical ELINT Processor, was planned to work with the FARRAH spacecraft. However, ITEP proved suitable to work with URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH. The Air Force later dropped the “I” from ITEP, referring to it as TEP. The Army renamed its vans as the Electronic Processing and Dissemination System (EPDS), and by 1990 they were widely deployed throughout the world.[13]
According to one person who worked on the satellites during this time, “Back in the early 1970’s the new mission was to get data directly to the commander on the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area). I had a payload with possibilities if it could be ‘trailerized.’ We decided to go for it but needed a catchy name, so we used DRACULA…Direct Readout and Collection ULA (‘ULA’ was the three-letter shorthand for the URSALA payload).” The Air Force officer put together a briefing for NRO headquarters in the Pentagon. “General Bradburn liked the briefing but trashed the name, saying that he could already hear the welcome by the East Coast: Oh, no, not another blood sucking program from out west!”[14]
Before the launch of URSALA III in 1976, the NRO had decided to let the program die with the end of URSALA IV. However, data users objected and there was pressure to continue or reinstate the program. “In order to do this funding from both the tactical EOB users and the technical intelligence users was needed to cover the costs of a replacement vehicle,” an official history noted.[15] Although details are still limited, apparently this meant that the Army, Navy, and Air Force were required to pay for part of the satellite program. If so, this would have also given the service branches a greater say in the establishment of requirements.
URSALA III and IV, launched in 1976 and 1979, were also designed for general search and electronic order of battle detection missions and had the same frequency range of 2 to 12 gigahertz as their predecessors.[16] But they weighed substantially more, at 259 kilograms (570 pounds), and were designed with 18-month lifetimes. URSALA IV was equipped with an encrypted downlink to enable its use by tactical forces.[17] URSALA III lasted 133 months and URSALA IV lasted 35 months.[18]
ELINT images
The RAQUEL 1A satellite was launched in 1978 and during the 1982 Falklands War it was used to gather signals from Argentine deployed forces that were probably provided to the UK military. The satellite may have played a role in locating the light cruiser ARA General Belgrano, which was sunk by a Royal Navy submarine. (credit: NRO)
RAQUEL 1 and 1A
RAQUEL was similar to URSALA in design, although intended to search different frequency bands. Whereas URSALA was a “general search” satellite, RAQUEL was described as a “directed search and technical intelligence” satellite. The primary mission of RAQUEL was to “search for, locate, and identify new or unusual signals and to collect emitter mainbeam technical intelligence data on signals in the 4-18 GHz frequency range in accordance with the National SIGINT Requirements List (NSRL). Additional mission requirements include the collection and reporting of operational ELINT data.”[19] The satellite also had a technical intelligence receiver that was capable of recording fine data about the signals it detected. RAQUEL 1 was launched off a HEXAGON satellite in October 1974, and RAQUEL 1A was launched from a HEXAGON in March 1978. RAQUEL 1A cost $13.6 million in 1976, an indication of the approximate cost of the satellites of this type.[20] Initially there had been plans to develop a RAQUEL II, but the cost was deemed excessive.
RAQUEL 1 weighed 256 kilograms (565 pounds) and was described as the “first of new block of increased capability, high reliability spacecraft.” It had a design life of 18 months, but eventually lasted 63 months, until early 1980.[21,22]
RAQUEL 1A was declared operational by mid-May 1978, and “time critical reporting procedures for North Korea, the Middle East, and the Ethiopia-Somalia border were implemented.”[23] It later intercepted and geolocated uplinks from Afghanistan that apparently indicated Soviet plans to invade the country. Shortly after the Soviets began sending aircraft and materials into Afghanistan in 1979, the satellite detected a key Soviet communications satellite uplink.
More internal volume became available inside the basic subsatellite shape, and designers took advantage of this by packing in even more electronics. One officer who worked on the program calculated that the satellite was now the density of solid mahogany.
During the 1982 Falklands War, the satellite was reoriented to provide coverage of extreme southern latitudes. This was possible while maintaining much of the usual northern hemisphere coverage. The attitude maneuver was performed during April 24–27, 1982, resulting in two to four passes a day of daytime coverage, providing high-quality collection.[24] Details on the satellite’s value during the Falklands War are unavailable, but obvious targets of interest would have been Argentine air defense radars deployed to the islands, as well as the locations of any Argentine naval vessels. Notably, the Argentine light cruiser ARA General Belgrano was sunk on May 1 by a Royal Navy nuclear submarine, several days after RAQUEL 1A began monitoring the conflict.[25]
The satellites had projected lifetimes of approximately three years but lasted over four times as long. RAQUEL 1A was put into caretaker status in March 1987, but was taken in and out of caretaker status several times after that, including an extended period from August to October 1987 to monitor a still-classified target. In September 1990, operators prepared to take the satellite out of caretaker status again to support Desert Shield/Storm, but this proved unnecessary. RAQUEL 1A re-entered the atmosphere in February 1992, after 14 years in orbit.
ELINT images
The first two FARRAH satellites were box-like and deployed from HEXAGON satellites. FARRAH III, IV, and V were larger and originally intended for launch from the space shuttle. They were later switched to Titan II rockets. From their low Earth orbit, they could detect radar signals and provide intelligence to tactical forces. (credit: NRO)
FARRAHs I and II
By 1976, after reversing the decision to end the low Earth orbit signals intelligence program, the NRO decided to recombine the search and electronic order of battle functions (with geolocation) that had been separated into the URSALA satellites and the technical intelligence functions that had been put into the RAQUEL satellites. This single vehicle was initially called “SAT 1.” The SAT 1 study was conducted by Lockheed and combined the functions along with expanded frequency coverage from 2 to 18 gigahertz. The concept was funded in 1977 and construction started in 1978. The satellite was renamed FARRAH.[27]
Changes to the bus-sized HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellite enabled even heavier subsatellite payloads to be mounted to their sides.[28] In addition, reduction in electronics size meant that more internal volume became available inside the basic subsatellite shape, and designers took advantage of this by packing in even more electronics. One officer who worked on the program calculated that the satellite was now the density of solid mahogany.
The satellites were equipped with a CDC 469 on-board general purpose digital computer. The computer was used for real time “deinterleaving and readout directly to remote tactical support vans.” This computer was small, lightweight, and energy efficient for its time.[29,30]
FARRAH I and II, launched in 1982 and 1984, respectively, were nearly identical spacecraft whose mission was “to acquire data to satisfy General Search, Operational Elint, and Technical Intelligence requirements on signals in the 2-18 GHz frequency range.” The general search requirements included high priority Soviet, Chinese, and other directed target areas. They also included known interest high-priority targets and strategic and tactical targets associated with weapon systems undergoing development. Operational intelligence was collected for the purposes of indications and warning, and Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty monitoring and force positioning. The FARRAH satellites further developed the capability to provide data to small tactical ground stations for US Army and Air Force units.[31]
The FARRAH satellites were located in orbits of approximately 709 kilometers (383 nautical miles) altitude inclined 96 degrees to the Equator. Each weighed approximately 340 kilograms (750 pounds) and they were designed with 36-month lifetimes, but ended up exceeding this by a substantial amount.[32,33] In early 1991 both satellites lost their final tape recorders, which limited them to transpond collection only, meaning that they could only send signals when they were both in line of sight with an emitter and a ground station. Despite having degraded substantially during the 1980s, both FARRAH I and II operated until the early 2000s, when they were shut down after two decades of service. FARRAH I ceased operations on November 3, 2004, 22 years after launch. FARRAH II was shut down on October 6, 2004, 20 years after launch. Both satellites were placed in a “non-recoverable state” and were projected to remain in orbit in excess of 50 years.
During the 1970s, the P-11-type satellites that had started out as relatively small and inexpensive a decade earlier had steadily grown in mass, cost, and capability. They had also evolved from mostly strategic intelligence collection systems to suppliers of operationally useful intelligence data to tactical units throughout the world. This had involved not only improvements to the satellites, but also new ground systems and new ways of sharing data. That also meant that new users, particularly the United States Army, emerged and began recommending the types of data that was most useful to them. TENCAP started with modest means but continued to grow.
ELINT images
The FARRAH satellites had antennas for intercepting different frequencies. The satellites spun at 50 RPM. (credit: NRO)
The shuttle era: the FARRAH “tuna cans”
In 1980, the National Reconnaissance Office determined which of its satellite programs would transition to use the Space Shuttle and which would continue to use existing expendable launch vehicles.[36] The GAMBIT and HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellite programs were both scheduled to retire during the 1980s and thus would not be modified to fly on the shuttle. Because the smaller Program 989 satellites like URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH had launched off the side of HEXAGON satellites, they would need a new way to reach orbit after the end of the HEXAGON program.
More internal volume became available inside the basic subsatellite shape, and designers took advantage of this by packing in even more electronics. One officer who worked on the program calculated that the satellite was now the density of solid mahogany.
As a result of this decision, the NRO performed an “ELINT Mix Study” and related studies to examine issues related to the transition of low altitude SIGINT programs to the shuttle. One possibility was combining existing low-altitude programs, or to replace selected low-altitude capabilities with an upgraded high-altitude satellite (as had been done with the large Program 770 STRAWMAN satellites in the early 1970s). The NRO determined that existing systems should be upgraded but not combined. The upgraded satellites would also be launched along with Improved PARCAE ocean surveillance satellites on the shuttle.[37]
NRO officials decided not only that future FARRAH satellites could be launched by the shuttle, but that they could be substantially enlarged to take advantage of the shuttle’s greater lift capabilities. At least three of the new satellites would be procured: FARRAH III, IV, and V. They would be larger and heavier than their predecessors with the same name, equipped with more antennas and receivers. The new satellites would weigh more than 1,360 kilograms (3,000 pounds), compared to 340 kilograms for FARRAHs I and II.[38]
ELINT images
According to an official history updated in 1991, the switch from expendable rockets to the shuttle and then back again for both the FARRAH and PARCAE programs “proved extremely costly” for both programs.
The NRO has now released illustrations of the FARRAH III satellite, indicating that it was a large, squat cylinder, generally referred to as a “tuna can,” and equipped with three dish antennas and several other pole antennas like its much smaller predecessor. FARRAH III had a tactical on-board processor and could direct downlink its data to users. One artist illustration showed this data being transmitted to fixed ground stations, ground-based mobile vans, and an aircraft carrier. FARRAH could therefore send data directly to some ships. In contrast, at the time, data was apparently not directly downlinked from the PARCAE ocean-surveillance satellites to ships but was first relayed through fixed ground stations for processing and then through geosynchronous communications satellites to ships at sea, as well as through a dedicated communications satellite network in highly elliptical orbits.
The satellites spun at 50 rpm and had three high-gain parabolic antennas that covered 0.8 to 6, 6 to 12, and 12 to 18 gigahertz. The latter used “cooled front-end electronics” to receive the higher frequencies. They were also equipped with single and double-boom omni antennas to suppress sidelobe interceptions.[39] FARRAH V had additional capabilities that remain classified.[40] FARRAH III was apparently designed with a three-year nominal lifetime.[41]
ELINT images
In the mid-1980s, several of the FARRAH signals intelligence satellites intended for shuttle launch were switched to use converted Titan II ICBMs. Three were launched starting in 1988, although FARRAH IV failed in orbit. (credit: Peter Hunter)
Although the plan had been to launch at least the first three of these larger FARRAH satellites on the shuttle, the NRO official in charge of the FARRAH program realized that this would require major upgrades to the shuttle that might not be funded in time, if at all, and he chose to remove the satellites from the shuttle and launch them on converted Titan II ICBMs instead. Eventually, the PARCAE program also switched from the shuttle to the expensive Titan IV rocket. According to an official history updated in 1991, the switch from expendable rockets to the shuttle and then back again for both the FARRAH and PARCAE programs “proved extremely costly” for both programs.[42]
FARRAH III was launched in September 1988. FARRAH IV was launched in September 1989 but failed soon after reaching orbit.[43] FARRAH V was launched in September 1992. No details have been released about when FARRAH III and V ceased operating, but in 2021 they were observed still spinning in orbit, and they could possibly still be operational. In 1993, three additional Titan II rockets that had been assigned to “classified payloads” were made available for other programs. It is likely that these three were originally allocated to FARRAHs VI-VIII, but a program reorientation resulted in their cancellation.[44]
Although designed with a three-year nominal lifetime, FARRAH III was apparently still alive nine years later.[45] Considering that its smaller predecessors lasted two decades, FARRAHs III and V could have even been operational into the 2010s. Recently, the Space Force celebrated the 30th anniversary of operations of the first Milstar communications satellite, and Defense Support Program missile warning satellites remain operational after two decades in orbit, indicating that long lifetimes in orbit are not unusual for military satellites.
ELINT images
The FARRAH satellites could supply intelligence data to tactical forces, ships, and even aircraft. Data could be recorded for later transmission, or directly transponded to a ground station as soon as it was received. Fixed ground stations could also re-transmit data. (credit: NRO)
The data from the FARRAH satellites could be sent down in several different ways. Data from the Tactical Onboard Processor could be transmitted by direct downlink to receivers, either fixed or mobile, including ships at sea. The signals intercepted by the satellites could be either recorded for later playback, or “transponded,” meaning that the data was sent as soon as it was collected. Data sent to a fixed ground station could then be relayed through a military comsat to another ground station or other users.[46]
An NRO document explained that the remote operating locations “are NRO assets strategically located near high interest areas, providing greater, near realtime coverage without putting tape recorder cycles on the satellites. This contiguous field of view between target area and receive site reduces the number of tape recorder cycles on the vehicles while preserving the intelligence value. The mechanical tape recorders are the life-limiting factor on our store-and-forward mission capabilities.” There were three remote operating locations for the satellites, although their locations are still classified.[47] The Mission 7300 data was also “fused” with other data, most likely from the PARCAE ocean surveillance satellites.
ELINT images
The LORRI 2 payload was attached to the last HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellite and was designed to search a little-used portion of the frequency spectrum to determine if it was being used by foreign military powers. The payload was destroyed when the Titan rocket carrying it blew up soon after launch. (credit: NRO)
LORRI I and II
In addition to the FARRAH satellites that served general electronic intelligence collection requirements, SAFSP also oversaw the development of several specialized systems during this period, such as LORRIs I and II, which were intended to survey portions of the spectrum that were still mostly unused by the military.
The concept for LORRI I was developed in 1973–1974, but limited funding delayed its development.[48] LORRI I was an attached payload carried on a HEXAGON satellite launched in 1980 and was “the first satellite collector of SIGINT in the 26-to-42-gigahertz frequency range. It remained with its host spacecraft for its entire lifetime of eight months.[49] LORRI I was intended to survey this frequency range to determine if it was being used by the Soviet Union or other countries for new purposes. It apparently demonstrated that the frequency range was mostly quiet. According to one document, the Naval Research Laboratory’s NRO component office (known as Program C) “flew an earlier, largely unproductive mission” similar to LORRI I. (It is unclear what this mission was, but it may have been included on a POPPY satellite.)[50]
LORRI II was expanded to cover three additional frequency ranges. These were 92 to 96 gigahertz, 70 to 74 gigahertz, and a VHF collection window centered at 158 megahertz to collect signals from a still-classified radar target as well as the large Soviet HEN HOUSE ABM and space-tracking radars.[51]
LORRI II was mounted to the side of the last HEXAGON photo-reconnaissance satellite, which was planned to have a much longer lifetime than previous HEXAGONs, staying in orbit long after its film ran out. That satellite and the LORRI II payload were lost when the Titan 34D rocket exploded soon after liftoff in April 1986. This prompted the NRO to search for near-term alternatives to replace the capability. One solution was a small satellite known as GLORIA I. The other was to make modifications to FARRAH III, then approximately one year from launch.[52]
ELINT images
Two classified GLORIA satellites were carried into orbit on space shuttle missions STS-28R in 1989 and STS-39 in 1991. The secret satellites were carried in containers in the shuttle's payload bay. (credit: NASA)
GLORIA
GLORIA I was a small satellite deployed from the payload bay of the space shuttle Columbia during the STS-28R mission in 1989. It was a spin-stabilized satellite with a single one-foot (30-centimeter) parabolic receiver. GLORIA I was originally conceived to collect signals in the 18-to-26-gigahertz region, but the loss of LORRI II resulted in a change to intercept a higher frequency band.[53] GLORIA I’s primary mission was a general search for pulsed emitters in the 30-to-38-giaghertz frequency region, repeating a survey of this frequency band that had been conducted by LORRI I nearly a decade earlier. It was also intended to test the feasibility of low-cost, quick reaction satellites and was generally considered a success. Because GLORIA did not find any new or unusual uses for this frequency region, the NRO determined that another survey would not be needed for a decade. Early during the mission, the satellite’s solid state memory suffered from radiation and “latch up” problems, which were overcome.
ELINT images
The GLORIA satellites were relatively small (note the scissors on the table) and used to search portions of the radio spectrum for new emitters. (credit: NRO)
GLORIA II was a nearly identical satellite deployed from the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-39 mission in 1991. GLORIA II’s memory, command decoder, and mass memory controller had been upgraded to overcome early flight deficiencies.[54] Both GLORIA satellites were built by Ball Brothers, with the payload built by E-Systems. They were intended to meet a requirement for quick response, low cost, and limited time mission objectives. GLORIA II surveyed 18-to-26-gighertz frequencies for radar and communications emitters, a frequency region that had not previously been covered by NRO satellites. GLORIA II did detect an unknown radar, although details are unavailable. A GLORIA III was apparently evaluated, but not developed.
ELINT images
CARRIE was launched in 1994 as part of the STEX satellite (also known as DARPASAT). It was designed to detect communications and provide intelligence data to American tactical forces. (credit: NRO)
CARRIE
CARRIE stood for COMINT and Rapid Reporting Interferometry Experiment.[56] CARRIE started out as a concept within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for an “experimental satellite providing direct support to warfighters.” The planned mission lifetime was one year, but the satellite lasted eight years until reentering the atmosphere in 2002. The satellite was designed to be quickly responsive, meaning that the collection requirements could be rapidly changed while the satellite was overhead.
The CARRIE satellite was launched as a ride-share on a Taurus rocket in 1994, part of the STEX satellite. One of its contributions to intelligence collection was finding evidence of “heritage” Soviet communications systems still operating in Cuba. It also geolocated new and unidentified emitters in multiple countries.
CARRIE was considered to be part of Mission 7200, because it was attached to STEX. CARRIE’s focus was on communications intelligence. STEX was apparently also used to relay data from FARRAH satellites that had lost their tape recorders a few years earlier, although it is unclear how STEX accomplished this.[57]
Mission 7300 ends
A summary produced in late 1997 indicated that Mission 7300 (the FARRAH satellites) and Mission 7200 (the CARRIE satellite) had detected 55 new signals in 1993, 52 in 1994, 49 in 1995, 33 in 1996, and 18 new signals by September 1997.[58] Clearly the number of new detections was declining over this period, although whether this was because of the collapse of the Soviet Union or the limitations of the satellites is unknown.
As early as 1980 there were studies within the NRO about possibly merging the PARCAE ocean surveillance system with the satellites of Mission 7300. That merger was rejected at the time in favor of upgrading both systems. But the existence of two systems for low Earth orbit signals intelligence collection, along with the increasing cost of both, required NRO officials to defend them, apparently both from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and relevant congressional committees.
The Mission 7100 ocean surveillance program ended in 2008, but it is unclear when, or if, the Mission 7300 signals intelligence program also ended, or if some of the satellites remain in operation despite having been supplanted by a new effort starting in the 1990s.
At some point during the 1980s, the program office for Mission 7300 produced a document explaining “Why Mission 7300 does so well in detecting new signals.” It declared that the system was “superior in its ability to find new signals in the SIGINT environment because it has the following inherent characteristics: special system capabilities, and extensive parametric and geolocation information from a single blip (pulse or CW sample).”[59] The special system capabilities included full Earth coverage, including the southern hemisphere and broad ocean areas. It “continues to evaluate the world environment prior to, during, and after events. While other systems are focusing on world events, Mission 7300 continues to provide General Search data.” It also had extensive frequency coverage of 2 to 18 gigahertz, plus 20 to 60 megahertz, 150 to 170 megahertz, and 30 to 38 gigahertz, with future capability (possibly in FARRAH V) including the regions 0.8 to 2 gigahertz and 18 to 26 gigahertz. The system had rapid frequency span coverage and geolocation with a single collector.
All of the Mission 7300 data was processed and analyzed. This was apparently in contrast to the PARCAE data, which was not completely processed. As one former PARCAE contractor noted, at least in the early years of the program much of the data was discarded because there was too much to process.
According to documents released by the NRO, the low Earth orbit signals intelligence mission and the ocean surveillance mission were eventually merged during the 1990s. The Mission 7100 ocean surveillance program ended in 2008, but it is unclear when, or if, the Mission 7300 signals intelligence program also ended, or if some of the satellites remain in operation despite having been supplanted by a new effort starting in the 1990s.
Today, satellite intelligence is integrated into military operations more extensively than ever before, the ultimate legacy of Program 989 and its satellites named after movie actresses.
Acknowledgement: The author wishes to thank NW for his extensive help.
References
“P-989 Historical Summary and Aerospace Support,” November 1972, C05098605, p. 3. This and the other documents are available here.
The Program 989 designation was discontinued sometime in the 1980s, possibly replaced by another name which is deleted in the titles of several late-1980s documents. The deletions are too long to be a number. For example, see: “[Deleted] SIGINT Collection Systems,” November 1, 1987, C05098752.
Mission 7800 referred to an “intrusion detection system” probably mounted to most satellites to detect attempts to hack them. This was the successor to a program in the 1960s known as “BIT.”
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” [n.d. but probably 1990], C05098529, p. 19.
Ibid. Information on MABELI is on pp. 15-19.
Ibid., p. 22. According to one document, several of these are acronyms, although it is highly likely that they were “backronyms,” meaning that they came up with the name first and then created an acronym that fit. They are: URSALA = Universal Radar Search And Location Acquisition; RAQUEL = Radar AcQUisition Equipment with Location; SHARON = Signal Handling And RecognitiON. “P-989 Historical Summary and Aerospace Support,” November 1972, C05098605.
Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid., p. 22.
“A Brief History of the U.S. Low Earth Orbit Reconnaissance Programs,” n.d. C05027386. (Note that another version of this history is dated 1991.)
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 6.
“A Brief History of the U.S. Low Earth Orbit Reconnaissance Programs,” n.d. C05027386.
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” pp. 25-26.
Ibid.
Peter Swan and Cathy Swan, "Birth of Air Force Satellite Reconnaissance," Lulu.com, 2015, p. 129.
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 31.
“Subsatellites,” n.d. (1974) C05098790.
“A Brief History of the U.S. Low Earth Orbit Reconnaissance Programs,” n.d. C05027386.
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 6.
“Mission 7300 Monthly Collection Summary,” September 1988, C05098530.
“989 Program Plan,” July 7, 1976, C05098571.
“Subsatellites.”
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 6. Although some documents use Roman numerals for the two RAQUEL satellites (I and IA), others use the numbers 1 and 1A.
“Section VI: Spacecraft,” n.d. (but approximately February 1992), C05098535.
Ibid.
“Mission 7300 Evolution.” Falkland Islands War is mentioned on p. 32.
“Section VI: Spacecraft.”
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 31.
“A Brief History of the U.S. Low Earth Orbit Reconnaissance Programs,” n.d. C05027386.
“[Deleted] SIGINT Collection Systems,” November 1, 1987, C05098752.
“Mission 7300 Program History,” n.d., C05098534.
“Mission 7300 Monthly Collection Summary,” September 1988, C05098530
“A Brief History of the U.S. Low Earth Orbit Reconnaissance Programs,” n.d. C05027386. Another source indicates that the design lifetime was 2.5 years, or 30 months.
“Mission 7300 Program History.”
Peter B. Teets, Director, NRO, “Termination of FARRAH-1 (Mission 7346) Mission Operations,” November 12, 2004. C05098412.
Peter B. Teets, Director, NRO, “Termination of FARRAH-2 (Mission 7347) Mission Operations,” October 14, 2004. C05098413.
“A Brief History of the U.S. Low Earth Orbit Reconnaissance Programs,” n.d. C05027386.
Ibid.
Ibid.
“Mission 7300 Payload,” n.d., C05098533, pp. 8-9.
“[Deleted] Orientation Course,” M7200 & M7300 System Overview, April 28, 1998, C05098519, p.11.
Ibid,, p. 13. The document is somewhat confusing because although the cover page indicates it was produced in 1998, page 13 includes a reference to the FARRAH program being “Still alive in 2005!”
“A Brief History of the LEO Program,” (file dated 8/13/91), C05098892, pp. 7-8.
FARRAH IV is referenced in C05098529, p. 3.
See Jeffrey Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, 4th Ed. 1999, pp. 195-186.
“[Deleted] Orientation Course,” p. 13.
“Mission Planning Mission 7300,” contained in “Chapter 5, Command and Control,” [n.d. but probably 1990], p. 41. C05098521.
Ibid.
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 49.
“Program History Mission 7300,” n.d. (approx. 1985), C05098521.
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 49.
Ibid.
William H. Webster, Director of Central Intelligence, to Louis Stokes, Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. House of Representatives, July 24, 1987. CO5098518. The letter notes that the small payload would be available for launch in summer 1988, but it was not launched until summer 1989.
“Mission 7300 Evolution,” p. 49.
Ibid., p. 50.
Section II, “The [Deleted] Low Earth Orbit SIGINT System (Mission 73XX), November 3, 1989, C05098800
“Mission 7300 Program History,” n.d., C05098534.
“[Deleted] Orientation Course,” p.12.
Ibid., p. 7.
“Why Mission 7300 Does So Well in Detecting New Signals,” [n.d.], C05098523.
Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.
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