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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. monocasa · · 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;KH-11_KENNEN" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;KH-11_KENNEN

      1. palmotea · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; Way longer than that. The first KH-11 satellites that Hubble shares its design with were in orbit in the late 1970s.

        I&#x27;m not sure if it actually &quot;shares its design&quot; with KH-11, but has a more indirect connection, e.g.:

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23150092">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23150092:

        &gt; My favorite KH-11&#x2F;Hubble story is that during the design of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA originally wanted a 3 meter mirror. However when they began to design and budget the satellite they were quietly told they should reconsider and use a 2.4 meter mirror, as this would be significantly cheaper since they would be able to leverage existed machinery capable of created mirrors of that size and precision. That infrastructure and manufacturing process had already been created a decade earlier for Keyhole.

        1. voidUpdate · · focus · HN ↗
          If the manufacturing for the 2.4 meter mirrors existed a decade earlier, and Hubble used the existing processes, does that mean all the KH-11 satellites also have the spherical aberration problem that Hubble has?
          1. iririririr · · focus · HN ↗
            or hubble has the aberration because the design optimized for cost on that bandwidth, because nobody would ever need to zoom individual fibers on a newspaper page? remember those where pointed the other way around.

            but that&#x27;s an awesome rabbit hole you pointed out!

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