‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites (2025)

306 points · 162 comments · Bluestein

  1. Almondsetat · · focus · HN ↗
    The incredible and futuristic technologies the US managed to deploy decades before the competition reminds me of the story of how the NRO gifted NASA a couple of their old decommissioned satellites in 2012 and they turned out to be basically upgraded Hubble telescopes pointed at earth. The US from the 90s to the 2000s had multiple Hubble-level telescopes just for spying while NASA was fighting for scraps to study the entire cosmos.
    1. walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
      We see a few bits and pieces released to the public of optical/infrared wavelength mirrors and hubble-like hardware from IMINT systems. One thing that's never really been shown to the public, not even 50 year old 1970s era stuff, are photos/examples of the SIGINT systems that the NSA likely has in orbit. Or good details of other things that also fall within the RF engineering domain like synthetic aperture radar satellites to monitor naval activity, construction activity like digging bunkers, etc.

      If you think the public DEM/DSM datasets like the ASTER GDER v3 or SRTM GL1 V3 are pretty good, I would bet that the DoD has things far more accurate than those as digital models of the surface and built environment of the earth's surface.

      1. buckle8017 · · focus · HN ↗
        High probability the NSA has satellites intercepting cellular radio traffic world wide with triangulation.

        Pocket backdoors.

        1. aorloff · · focus · HN ↗
          Cell triangulation is practically consumer grade technology now

          For a while just before smartphones, at least 15 years ago now, carriers were experimenting with APIs that allow opted-in dumbphones to be triangulated (via cell tower) and tracked via API.

          1. throwaway85825 · · focus · HN ↗
            Trilateration is an inherent requirement for beamforming which is the only way they've been able to squeeze in more bandwidth for the low bands.
        2. throwaway2037 · · focus · HN ↗
          Is this traffic encrypted?
          1. buckle8017 · · focus · HN ↗
            It's... enciphered.

            They rolled their own.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.