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. corvad · 1790809683 · focus · HN ↗
  I mean NASA's budget was/is minuscule in comparison to defense spending so I am not surprised.
  1. deepsun · 1790810217 · focus · HN ↗
    How? NASA budget is around 20-30bn in recent years, same scale as US Space Force department budget (26bn in recent years, 40bn in 2026). Comparable, but not minuscule.
    whatever1 · 1790810535 · focus · HN ↗
    Why is the space force budget relevant? The US has had spy satellites decades before the clown made the space force for his family and friends to feast.
    jandrewrogers · 1790811615 · focus · HN ↗
    The Space Force has existed for decades before Trump. It was part of the Air Force and is still organized under that Department. They have been slowly increasing its independence as a branch of the military for a long time.
    It isn't much different than how the Air Force was eventually carved out of the Army Air Corps.
    walrus01 · 1790812104 · focus · HN ↗
    As a small example of the size/scale of the money spent:
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches
    "Air Force", "Space Force" are maybe well known to the general population, not many people outside of military/government/tech circles even know the NRO or NGIA exists or what the acronym means. The line gets a bit blurry between Air Force money spent, NRO, NSA, in some regards it's just better to think of it as buckets of how things get labeled within the larger DoD.
    My personal favorite mission patch: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247#/media/File:NROL_39_vector_logo.svg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247#/media/File:NROL_39_ve...
    jandrewrogers · 1790818242 · focus · HN ↗
    FWIW, I think you mean NGA instead NGIA. They added a hyphen between “geospatial” and “intelligence” to avoid the eternal embarrassment of a 4-letter acronym.
    The mission scope of the various intelligence agencies has evolved a lot over time as capabilities and requirements have changed. Even the histories of how these independent agencies came to exist is pretty interesting.
    And yeah, that mission patch is fire.
    jasomill · 1790829594 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe so, but the former FLA was NIMA, not NGIA.
    jandrewrogers · 1790905348 · focus · HN ↗
    I had completely forgotten about NIMA. That's pretty obscure!

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