New Spy Satellites Revealed By Air Force; Will Watch Other Sats

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/new-spy-satellites-revealed-by-air-force-will-watch-other-sats/



New Spy Satellites Revealed By Air Force; Will Watch Other Sats
By Colin Clark
on February 21, 2014 at 2:39 PM

AFA WINTER, ORLANDO: The Air Force revealed today the existence of a new set of classified electro-optical satellites — the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSAP) — designed to spot other satellites and space debris.

What effect might this have on nations, such as, say, China, who realize the enormous military advantage that space provides the United States?

Brian Weeden, one of the few people around who speaks space fluently and doesn’t have a dog in this fight, said the new satellites appear to resemble an upgraded version of DARPA’s MiTEx (Micro-satellite Technology Experiment) satellite. They were reportedly used, among other things, to get close to and observe other satellites.

“Having these satellites drifting by everything in GEO [geosynchronous orbit, which allows a satellite to hover one spot of the globe] would like be a big source of information. Of course, that’s exactly the sort of thing the U.S. military is extremely worried another country will do to figure out what the U.S. has in GEO. So it’s likely other countries, especially Russia and China, are going to consider this a threat,” he said in an email after reading the Air Force Fact Sheet on G-SAP. Weeden is the technical advisor for the Secure World Foundation, which focuses on the peaceful uses of outer space.