Sunday, June 24, 2007

Fight Over Secret Satellite Program Is Revived

It appears that the Misty Stealth Recon Satellite program is on the chopping block again. Read the complete story by CQ Today staffer Tim Sparks at
http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002537553.html.

Another interesting angle on this story on the DefenseTech.org blog at http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001272.html.

And here on Arms Control Wonk.com (http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/311/spysat-revealed-its-misty), a possible drawing of a Misty spacecraft?

It is believed there have been two spacecraft launched under the Misty program banner:

1990-019B 20516 AFP-731/Misty 1/SRS 2 USA 53 2/28/1990 0750 UTC ETR
STS-36 Shuttle Period-88.6 Inc-62.00 242 x 238 km orbit

1999-028A 25744 Misty 2/NRO-8x/EIS-1 USA 144 5/22/1999 0936 UTC WTR SLC4E
Titan 404B Period-148.4 Inc-63.40 3133 x 2688 km orbit. Note: This Titan used 50 foot fairing instead of 66 foot fairing used for Lacrosse radar imaging satellites.

More on this as we have it.