The U.S. government revealed details of a secret satellite program it used to spy on the Soviet Union at the height of geopolitical tension between the two nations.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) recently declassified its JUMPSEAT spy satellite, eight of which launched to a highly elliptical orbit from 1971 to 1987. The Pentagon developed JUMPSEAT as part of the U.S. Air Force’s program, called Project EARPOP, to build satellites capable of intercepting or decrypting electronic emissions from Earth.
“The historical significance of JUMPSEAT cannot be understated,” James Outzen, NRO director of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, said in a statement. “Its orbit provided the U.S. a new vantage point for the collection of unique and critical signals intelligence from space.”
Classified orbit
From the moment the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the United States became concerned about space as a potential domain for spying and other military activities. JUMPSEAT followed the launch of earlier electronic surveillance satellites: GRAB and POPPY.
The U.S. launched its earlier satellites to low Earth orbit and needed to collect intelligence from a different vantage point in space. JUMPSEAT was designed to operate in a highly elliptical orbit known as Molniya.
Satellites in Molniya have an orbital period of roughly 12 hours, coming as close as 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) to Earth during perigee and as far as roughly 24,855 miles (40,000 kilometers) from Earth during apogee. The elongated, egg-shaped orbits are ideal for continuous, long-duration coverage over high-latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere.
The satellites would beam downlinked data to Earth for initial processing. The NRO processed the data before sending it to the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, and other national security agencies. JUMPSEAT operated in a transponder mode before the NRO took them out of service in 2006.
No more spying
The NRO’s declassification memorandum states that the satellites performed admirably during their time in operation. The agency took the decision to declassify the spy satellite program as it would not cause harm to current or future satellite programs.
Not all of the satellite’s capabilities, however, were shared in the declassified information. Similar to its predecessors, some of JUMPSEAT’s activities in space remain a mystery.
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