Spying From Space

The race to employ spy satellites has been ongoing. It dates back to the very beginnings of the space age. The Soviets and ourselves were locked in a data gathering race that is still taking place at this very moment, but the stage has changed and there are a lot more players now. First I would like to make something perfectly clear. As far as we can tell the very first space craft to have a weapon on it was launched from the old Soviet Union. I will go into that a little later. The race to gather data did not start with the space race, it has been going on since the very first hostilities on earth, when one person or tribe tried to get the upper hand on their enemies by finding something out about them that would help in fighting them. In the beginning it might have been something as simple as how many men the other side had. It probably developed into finding out how they were armed and maybe how well trained they were and what divisions were being employed. It has just escalated ever since.

MOL Launch - Notice Gemini Capsule On Top
US Air Force

During the cold war we developed the U-2 spy plane. In its day it was a miracle. It could fly at over 60,000 feet and was thought to be safe since it was felt that this was beyond the range of Soviet antiaircraft missiles. We began flying this plane over the old Soviet Union to gather data on their missiles and such, but as we did, the Soviets were advancing the capabilities of their defensives and were able to increase the range of their antiaircraft missiles and shoot down one of our U-2 spy planes. This resulted in a show trial for the pilot and very bad press for the US. It was decided that the best way to spy on the Soviet Union was from space. The powers that be decided that a satellite was not good enough, we needed a manned satellite and thus the MOL program was born. This was a program in the early 1960s that was training pilots to be astronauts in secret. The idea was to put up a space station that was about the size of a school bus and have two American astronauts manning it.

The MOL program was canceled before the first manned launch. At the time the US was able to see an object that was under 2 inches in size from 100 miles up in space, imagine what they can see today? The Soviets had grander plans and developed a huge 4 ton spy space station named Almaz, that spied on the US from space for over 7 years. The reason that the space station project was finally abandoned was that when the Soviets figured out the actual time that had to photograph us, verses the maintenance and all the problems, it just was not worth it. For the seven years that the station was in existence the cosmonauts on the station were able to photograph an object as small as 3 inches in the US from 250 meters up in space.

Soviet Zenit Spy Satellite. It was called Kosmos
Photo Source: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

This certainly goes a long way to illustrate that both countries had secret space programs. I don't know how many times I have said that I believed that the US Air Force was running a secret space program and since this is proof that they were running one in the 1960s, what would make us think that they are not doing so now? For all we know they are still going to the moon and may even be on Mars, or exploring space further out. It does seem strange that we civilians just seem to be doing nothing, but making promises of future missions. Is it because we have already traveled back to the moon and now we are just buying time so that people don't realize that we might even have bases there?

KH-11 Photo Of Soviet Shipyard
Photo Source: Public Domain

When the digital age came upon the world things really changed, so did the notion of not having a spy satellite. It had become much easier to have one. Film had been eliminated and pictures could be beamed back to earth and they didn't have to be converted electronically. The Soviets would take photos on film from their space station then use a video camera to relay them to earth. That all became unnecessary. We had put up early spy satellites that did use film and they had to parachute the film to earth, an extremely awkward process. The early Soviet satellites would return to earth with their photos. Because they had to return to earth, the Soviets had to launch over 500 of one type over its lifetime, a very expensive proposition To hide their existence the Soviets called them Kosmos satellites

The first digital spy satellite was thought to be the KH-11. It was also called Crystal and Kennan. Another name for it was Key Hole. It was a US satellite and was first launched in December 1976 and manufactured by Lockheed. It was also the first satellite to have a real time optical observation capability.

I had promised to tell you about the first armed satellite in space. That was actually the Soviet Almaz space station. It had a cannon mounted on the front of it. The Soviets claimed that it was there to protect it from killer satellites They never fired it with the crew on the station, because they were afraid of what might happen to the station, but they did test fire it between crews by remote control and the station withstood the blast.

Today the space above the earth is full of spy satellites They are politely known as reconnaissance satellites. As of last count, 13 nations have them, but by the time you read this, there could be more. The days of secrets above ground are over. Could this be one of the reasons that so many countries are going underground? It will be interesting to see what might happen if a country perfects some method for looking deep into the earth from above. Then there will truly be no place to hide.