WASHINGTON: On Wednesday, SpaceX launched the first group of working spy satellites it built as part of a new US intelligence network that will greatly enhance the country’s ability to spy from space. This is the first of several planned launches this year.
Two news stories from earlier this year from Reuters revealed the spy network. They said that SpaceX is making hundreds of satellites for the US National Reconnaissance Office, which is an intelligence agency, as part of a huge system in space that can quickly find targets on the ground almost anywhere in the world.
Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), a company that has worked in space and military for a long time, is also working on the project.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in southern California at 4 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. It sent into space what the NRO called the “first launch of the NRO’s proliferated systems featuring responsive collection and rapid data delivery.”
“About six launches supporting NRO’s proliferated architecture are planned for 2024, and more launches are expected through 2028,” the agency said, but it didn’t say how many satellites would be used.
Around the world, militaries and intelligence agencies are relying more and more on satellites in Earth’s orbit to help them with operations on Earth. This trend has been sped up in part by falling costs of sending things into space and new threats to traditional ways of gathering information on land or in the air.
The fact that the NRO has its own satellite network also shows how much the US government depends on Elon Musk’s SpaceX for some of its most important tasks. The company has become the biggest satellite operator in the world with its Starlink network, which is made up of thousands of commercial broadband internet satellites. It also controls most of the rocket launch business in the US.
