Thread

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

306 points · 162 comments · Bluestein

Almondsetat · 1790809198 · 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. monocasa · 1790813494 · focus · HN ↗
  Way longer than that. The first KH-11 satellites that Hubble shares its design with were in orbit in the late 1970s.
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
  1. underlipton · 1790817465 · focus · HN ↗
    It occurs to me that projecting the image of NASA struggling (but always successfully) to deploy this kind of tech might intended be a part of the cover.
    eks391 · 1790820736 · focus · HN ↗
    I doubt it. The NRO was a classified department until very recently, and NASA doesn't classify its programs, so there's no reason for NASA's employees to have clearances. Therefore, NASA leadership and strategists wouldn't have even known that the NRO existed, and independently came up with their lesser satellites, no agenda needed to pretend to have an inferior space sector
    walrus01 · 1790821222 · focus · HN ↗
    People knew the NRO existed a long time before it was publicly acknowledged, you can't have an office building of that size, parking and sheer number of people commuting to it daily in a regular pattern in a Washington DC suburb without some people starting to talk.
    It was kind of a "yeah of course, what do you expect, we don't have this capability?" rhetorical question.
    It was known in much the same way Janet flights are known.
    Thinking that nasa leadership wouldn't be aware of its existence at all is not accurate, I think, any more than thinking people at certain aerospace contractors didn't know it existed... More like, it was metaphorically over on the other side of a fence that people were not allowed to touch.
    throwaway85825 · 1790870653 · focus · HN ↗
    Most NRO employees are imagery analysts. Most of the satellite development is done by contractors.
    jychang · 1790887534 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s easier to draw the connection than that.
    Hans Mark
    Director of NASA Ames 1969-1977
    Director of the NRO 1977-1979
    Deputy Director of NASA 1981-1984
    There’s plenty of other examples, Hans Mark is the most obvious highest up one. “Leadership at NASA doesn’t know about the NRO” is a hilarious concept to me. Did they forget they own jobs?

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