Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • September 8, 2024 2:29 PM

@ David Rudling,

Re : NASA and NSA.

You say you were,

‘… intrigued by the NASA SPACE SHUTTLE ASTRONAUTS presentation to the “fully cleared population of NSA”’

Consider that some shuttle missions were “military” or NRO in nature and classified “up beyond the…” Remember the NSA is yet another federal agency that has had similar missions.

If you have sufficient public information about shuttle missions like launches and dates and where they were from, you can work out some information just by looking for holes in released information.

Also we know due to a cock-up with a “Surrey Satellite Ltd”(SSL) co-launch that was being used as a technology demonstrator / prover / certifier [1], what was “supposedly” an experimental weather satellite was actually an altogether different type of recognizance bird or as some would say “spy satellite”.

In essence the SSL bird was launched out and started taking photos some of which were clear shots of the supposed weather bird. Due to one thing and another the photos became somewhat wider circulated than others realised before they could be pulled back…

The thing is it’s realy quite difficult to put a bird in space without people being able to work things out even with “cover stories”. Most launches in effect follow ballistic trajectories so the basic orbit can be fairly easily deduced. Even though “comms” is secured in various ways, many people know how to get information from public sources and by pointing antennas up into the air.

Whilst you might not be able to understand what individual messages do observing the “traffic” will tell you quite a bit.

As will pointing a telescope of reasonable power in the right direction, at the right time (remember the ISS can be easily seen with the naked eye, as can Mr X’s toys he launches up a couple of times a month etc).

Also it’s not talked about but some satellites have IR Tri-corner reflectors on them so their position etc can be measured very accurately with IR lasers. Also remember “red-eye” or “lamping” a focused optical system does 180degree reflection so if the bird is looking at you, you can see the bird like you xan a rabit or fox, or those “cats eyes” on country roads. The same by the way is true for Microwave Radio systems (actually it can work in the VHF bands as well which can enable receivers to be found even though they are assumed be “passive”).

Surprisingly to many you can modify commercial radar systems in the 3cm band to work at several hundred kM which will get you to see not just aircraft but other birds as they fly by…

Fun fact there are “ham radio” operators that bounce VHF (145MHz) and UHF (440MHz) signals off of commercial aircraft, though microwave frequencies work better and give greater range. In effect the aircraft act as mirrors so that “over the horizon” contacts can be made. You can look the activity up as “aircraft scatter”,

https://w3sz.com/AircraftScatter.htm

Also look up the likes of EME where signals are bounced of our “natural satellite” the moon. For those that know NSA history especially about the “Liberty” you will quickly find that the NSA used EME to communicate to and from their “spy ships”.

Oh and don’t forget that weather balloons carry tri-corner reflectors dangling down beneath them so their position and altitude can be tracked in real time very accurately and tied to the telemetry for temperature humidity and a few other things like barometric pressure, radiation, and more.

But for the NRO and NSA the old military dictum about “having the high ground” holds true for many things, including ships and submarine covert tracking.

[1] New technology for use in space is all to often old technology even by consumer electronics standards. Batteries for instance are in some cases those that were “End of Life’d”(EOL’d) by their manufacturer years ago. For instance Samsung AA rechargable bats which had been “space qualified” were being very carefully kept for over six years past when they were last made. It’s “chicken and egg” because of amongst other things insurance… That is if you use uncertified parts you don’t get insurance at a sensible price if at all. But for a part to get certified it has to do “a tour of duty” in space being tested. The price of sending up a bird is in the tens of millions so nobody wants to use unqualified parts… The solution is that small payload manufacturers like SSL scrounge spare capacity on a lift os a main satellite. So put new tech in a cubeSat or similar and “thumb a lift” to put it in a suitable orbit for testing and it’s in the industries benefit to do so as it’s effectively a “rising tide” sub-mission that everybody wins by down the line.