Subject: Disappearing/missing spysats in the news
From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson)
Date: 1996/11/08
Message-Id: <thomsonaE0J1C2.J13@netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy,alt.politics.org.cia
The threads on SSP and APOC concerning missing and/or high-
flying spysats seem to have engendered some activity in the
mainstream media:
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Stargazers ponder ``missing'' U.S. spy satellites
REUTER
LONDON 6 NOV 1996
[EXCERPTS]
Four U.S. spy satellites ``missing'' since 1990 may have
been moved into secret orbits so they could carry on their
covert duties without being tracked, the New Scientist
magazine [*] reported...
Ted Molczan, a satellite spotter in Toronto monitored
three of the satellites from the time of their launch from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in 1990 and noticed they
all disappeared after several weeks in their initial orbits....
John Pike, a space analyst with the Washington-based
Federation of American Scientists noted that one of the
satellites disappeared just before the Gulf War. If the
satellite had died, the failure would have produced howls of
protest from members of Congress who monitor U.S. intelligence
gathering - something that did not happen, he said.
A more intriguing possibility is that the satellites were
placed into orbits which would move more slowly across the skies
than other [spysats], giving them more time to photograph
targets. Supporters of this theory point to the timing of the U.S.
air strikes in Iraq in September. Military strikes are usually
mounted immediately before a spy satellite passes overhead...
But after the latest strikes..., no known spy satellites
would have passed over the target area for between two and six
hours. This suggests that one or more of the missing satellites
may have been watching, satellite watchers said.
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Interesting how news gets around in the Wired World, no?
* A reliable if idiosyncratic informant has, ah, informed me
that the New Scientist article may be found at
http://www.newscientist.com/ps/thisweek/news/n0288.html
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