A Flash in the Night Sky

Might there be other explanations for the administration's concerns? Spy satellite technologies and capabilities are, along with code-breaking techniques, the crown jewels of U.S. intelligence. So little is known for certain about USA 193. But we do know it was a test vehicle for the next generation of American spy satellites. These future satellites will be, it is hoped, highly capable; USA 193 was reportedly equipped with radars able to picture the earth in minute detail day and night, even through cloud cover. It also reportedly carried gear enabling the intel community to detect electronic transmissions, plus other test equipment for its planned successors. Cartwright said at the Pentagon briefing that "our assessment is high probability that … this would not be of intelligence value." But it is known that the U.S. has been working for years to find a way to make its spy satellites "stealthy"—meaning hard to detect by radars on earth—so they can achieve surprise as they wing overhead perhaps a dozen times a day. The predictability of a satellite's orbital path is a weakness of space surveillance. There is ample evidence that the bad guys have long since learned to hide stuff when they know a U.S. satellite is due over the horizon. A stealthy satellite, maneuvered by its hydrazine-fueled jets into a new orbit, could catch the bad guys unawares. Technologies that made USA 193 stealthy—a shape designed to fool probing radars, a covering to evade other ground-based sensors—are secrets the U.S. might well be ready to spend $74 million to protect.

Then there is the intriguing question of USA 193's power source. Most satellites in the earth's orbit spread giant solar panels—wings the size of football fields—to turn the sun's radiation into electrical power. But those panels illuminate the bird to any radar. No satellite with solar panels can be stealthy. USA 193 failed within seconds of entering initial orbit after its liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Dec. 14, 2006. If it had survived, would it have unfurled solar panels? That's unclear, but it seems unlikely. What was the power source, then? Soviet satellites were commonly powered by miniature nuclear reactors. When the Soviets' Cosmos 954 satellite crashed to earth near Great Slave Lake in Canada in 1978, it spread radioactive debris for some miles. And by one count there are more than 50 nuclear reactors or reactor cores from defunct satellites still orbiting the earth. The U.S. uses nuclear reactors to power satellites sent on distant space probes, but has not—to the best of my knowledge—used them to power spy satellites in earth orbit for some 20 years. At the Pentagon briefing, all questions about USA 193's technologies were passed off to the National Reconnaissance Office, the supersecret agency that runs the U.S. spy satellite programs. The NRO is saying nothing. So the question remains: is USA 193 the first of a new generation of spy satellites powered by nuclear reactors? Could that, along with the risk from hydrazine, explain the administration's determination to destroy the bird?

Unfortunately, we don't know—not yet anyway. What is certain is that USA 193's failure is yet another blow to a U.S. spy satellite effort that was already in deep trouble. The details are arcane, but in essence, the older generation of American spy satellites—birds with names like Keyhole, Lacrosse and Chalet—are coming to the ends of their operational lives, and the U.S. has nothing to replace them with. USA 193 was the sole survivor of an ambitious plan to develop a new family of satellites; the concept was called "Future Imagery Architecture." But that program collapsed a couple of years ago under the weight of technical overreaching and multibillion-dollar cost overruns. The United States has not, thus far, come up with a program to replace it. Those flashes in the evening sky as the doomed USA 193 passes overhead signal the death of more than just one satellite.

© 2008