WHAT IS IT?

 

Spy satellites have been a mainstay of techno thrillers, video games, and spy movies for decades. Because they are in space, and are therefore high-tech and mysterious, they’ve been granted all kinds of magical abilities—cameras that can see through walls, engines with enough fuel and power to zip around the globe seeking targets, lasers powerful enough to burn targets hundreds of miles away, racks of space-launched nuclear weapons.

In reality, most spy satellites are just big, disposable cameras. They are placed either in stationary orbit over a specific location or propelled into an orbit that allows them to patrol a narrow band of the globe. Thousands of them, operated by dozens of nations and scores of agencies, occupy the space around the planet. They send back photographic and spectrographic information, intercept telephone and radio communications, and occasionally mess with other satellites.

They are not terribly interesting pieces of technology. Spy satellites are relatively simple devices, lacking the technical sophistication of war robots and the intricacy of human intelligence networks. They:


• Float stupidly in space

• Take pictures when ordered to

• Occasionally crash into the atmosphere and catch fire


Their advantage over other methods of intelligence gathering is:


• They can cover a vast amount of territory

• They cannot be seen without powerful and sophisticated detection technology

• They cannot be avoided or destroyed without top-of-the-line missiles


If you are the subject of a spy satellite and you’re not a nation-state equipped with long-range ballistic missiles, there’s very little you can do about it.