Really, if any extraterrestrials stumbled on earth and took a look, they would just shake their heads and continue on.
New US spy satellite in orbit
America launched a secret reconnaissance satellite atop an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 0837 EDT (1237 UTC) today. The spy bird, dubbed NROL-61 by its owners the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), was popped into geostationary orbit around Earth and is now getting itself into …
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Thursday 28th July 2016 22:02 GMT bazza
Nah, aliens have a sense of humour. They'd just jumble up all the satellite orbits, leaving us scratching our heads as to what'd gone wrong the Newtonian / Einsteinian mechanics all of a sudden. And they'd pose for the ultimate out-of-this-world selfies in front of the spy satellites and telescopes, just to show off.
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Friday 29th July 2016 04:22 GMT Gene Cash
Ah, the irony
Don't forget, the first stage used a Russian-built (NPO Energomash) RD-180 rocket engine.
Gotta love it. And idiots like John McCain don't understand why there's no new American engines. Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that Congress has cancelled funding for every single NASA engine R&D program.
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Friday 29th July 2016 15:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Location & Capabilities
"geostationary orbit around Earth [...] but where isn't known"
Other geo-sync operators will need to know where it is to ensure they don't try to park one of their birds in the same place.
"The exact capabilities of the satellite aren't known"
At that distance, we can be pretty sure that it won't be doing optical, and I'd estimate that location precision for V/UHF will be of the order of several square miles at best. I'd guess that it's intended to capture foreign power military up-link sat-comms from ground units, for traffic analysis and decryption.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
