Surprised no one has suggested Mars relay yet.
Quote from: kevin-rf on 03/04/2017 01:13 amSurprised no one has suggested Mars relay yet.Do the mass.
That might not be the only reason, a higher apogee in the northern hemisphere should give them a wider field of view at the cost of resolution, while USA 186's perigee (without doing math, and looking at heavens above) appears to be near the equator, Venezuela?, South China Sea?. That said, USA 245's perigee seems to be over Antarctica (wide field of view?), leaving USA 224 with a perigee that is pretty much above Europe, Russia, and China.
Quote from: kevin-rf on 08/16/2016 09:33 pmThat might not be the only reason, a higher apogee in the northern hemisphere should give them a wider field of view at the cost of resolution, while USA 186's perigee (without doing math, and looking at heavens above) appears to be near the equator, Venezuela?, South China Sea?. That said, USA 245's perigee seems to be over Antarctica (wide field of view?), leaving USA 224 with a perigee that is pretty much above Europe, Russia, and China. The perigee position of the KH-11 is actually not fixed but varies with time. Typical orbit boosts occur at the moment perigee is on the equator.
"KENNEN" is from Middle English, "to perceive."Prior name was ZAMAN.
The intriguing question is why did NRO release that memo?
Quote from: Targeteer on 04/08/2017 06:42 amThe intriguing question is why did NRO release that memo? It was in response to a FOIA request.There is a LOT of stuff declassified about the effort to develop the KH-11. I have quite a few documents, and there is stuff in the other program histories. (The relevant Perry program history was declassified years ago after I filed a FOIA request.) However, it is programmatic stuff, meaning meetings between officials, arguments about this approach vs. that approach, etc. The technology of the rejected approaches is described quite a bit, but there is limited declassified information on the final approach, the contractor selection and stuff like that. But you could write a decent article about what led up to the actual development of the spacecraft. I just haven't had the time or energy to bring all that together. Heck, I'm drowning in other stuff that I have not written about. But you could already describe a lot of the overall outline of the program right now.And who knows? Maybe you'll see something significant happen soon...
The KH-11 seems to be getting comparatively high profile for a still classified program, after all it featured heavily in the best selling Into The Black for example.As has been said before photo reconnaissance from space is a pretty common on garden thing now that even joe public maybe aware of.
Quote from: Star One on 04/08/2017 05:15 pmThe KH-11 seems to be getting comparatively high profile for a still classified program, after all it featured heavily in the best selling Into The Black for example.As has been said before photo reconnaissance from space is a pretty common on garden thing now that even joe public maybe aware of.The 11 was started in 1971. It's now 46 years old. Of course, we don't know the exact technical details, but Richelson reported years ago that the first two birds used a different sensor technology than the later ones. So it is not inconceivable that they could declassify the first block of satellites and not reveal anything else. Of course, it all depends upon what arguments win the day. I think that there is a certain amount of ilogic in some of the declassification decisions. For instance, the actual resolution of the KH-8, 9 and 10 are still classified. But with a relatively simple equation anybody can figure out the diffraction-limited resolution of those optics in orbit. American technology is so good that these systems generally achieved very close to diffraction-limited resolution. (My guess is that for all of those systems you can take the diffraction-limited resolution and then step it down by 5% and you would have the actual resolution.) The physics don't lie, and it's not really a secret.But we'll see what happens. I hope they get back to the low altitude SIGINT declassification that was in the works last year.
Still hoping to see some declassification of the first generation of NOSS satellites. I believe the program directly before them has been declassified as I am sure if memory serves it was mentioned in David Baker's recent Haynes Manual.