-Caveat Lector- April 27, 1999 Private Spy in Space to Rival Military's Forum Join a Discussion on Science in the News <http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.efdb6a0> By WILLIAM J. BROAD If all goes well Tuesday, years of planning, delay and debate will culminate in the launching of the world's most powerful civilian spacecraft for observing the Earth and its human dramas, inaugurating the first real rival to military spies in the sky. The satellite, built by Lockheed Martin for Space Imaging, a Colorado company, is to be hurled from a California launching pad into an orbit some 420 miles high, where its cameras will be able to record cars, homes, hot tubs, roads, buildings, bridges, convoys, tanks, jets, missiles and mass graves -- though not individual people. Satellite images could appeal to urban planners, or despots. And before the year is out, two more American companies plan to loft reconnaissance craft with similar powers. In all, a dozen or so are expected to be launched in the next decade. Though civilian "remote sensing" satellites have been observing the Earth since 1972, their images are wide-scale and the details fuzzy. The new surveillance technology is likely to be a powerful new tool for miners, geographers, urban planners and disaster-relief officials, to name a few potential clients. But the sharp-eyed cameras to be launched raise fears, too, about lost privacy and the possibility that images from such satellites will be just as valuable to adversaries like Slobodan Milosevic. Experts on space reconnaissance in and out of the Federal Government agree that the national security implications of the new technology have been inadequately thought out -- a worry thrown into sharp focus by the crisis in the Balkans. "Any time a powerful new technology is introduced, there's a battle over the uses to which it's put," Christopher Simpson, a reconnaissance expert at American University in Washington, said in an interview. "Here, the potential for beneficial uses is very high, on balance. But the potential for abuse certainly exists and we'll no doubt see some of that." The Clinton Administration released this genie in 1994 when it lifted technical restrictions on private companies, letting them build a new generation of satellites that could peer down to see objects on the ground as small as a yard wide -- enough to distinguish between a car and a truck. Even white lines on the black asphalt of parking lots are said to be discernible. Today, the new companies organized to take advantage of the change have backlogs of orders, including at least $1 billion from Federal intelligence agencies eager to supplement their spy satellites. Indeed, governments -- and military forces -- at home and abroad are expected to be top customers for years to come. "The militaries have a well-developed idea of what they want and have the money to pay for it," said Albert D. Wheelon, a former Central Intelligence Agency official who helped run the nation's early spy satellites and is now retired. "On the civilian side, I think that will take a long time, like computers did." The art of photographing the earth from outer space began when military spy craft were first lofted in 1960. Over the years, their vision sharpened, and military craft, particularly American craft, are still the undisputed leaders, their cameras said to be strong enough to see a car's license plate. Until recently, photos from commercial satellites have been much fuzzier, revealing only large features like fields, lakes, rivers and mountains. But little by little, their cameras have improved. Today, France, India and Russia sell the best commercial photos taken from outer space. The sharpest of all are Russian and show objects on the ground as small as two meters, or about six feet, enough detail to allow users to see tanks and other large military objects. In December 1997, Earthwatch Inc. of Longmont, Colo., lofted a satellite meant to see features as small as 10 feet. But the craft failed in orbit, prompting American rivals to tread with caution. While many other American craft of the improved class are still in planning stages, no others have gone into service. But Space Imaging is now ready to leapfrog ahead with a camera that sees objects as small as one meter, or about three feet -- the sharpest ever for civilian craft. Privately held and based in Denver, the company says it has about $700 million from a consortium of backers made up of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Mitsubishi and other international partners. The company has 285 employees. Its president is Jeffrey K. Harris, who from 1994 to 1996 ran the National Reconnaissance Office, the secretive Federal group that builds and runs the Government's spy satellites. Today's launching was first planned for December 1997 but was delayed after the Earthwatch failure. If all goes well, a nine-story Athena II rocket made, like the satellite, by Lockheed Martin, will carry the newest spy satellite aloft at 2:21 P.M. from Vandenberg Air Force Base, on the California coast north of Los Angeles. Because of its ability to send satellites into a north-south orbit that covers most of the Earth, the base is the launching site for most Government spy satellites that carry cameras. The new spacecraft is a lightweight at just 0.8 tons. About 15 feet long with its solar panels extended, it runs on just 1,200 watts of power -- a bit more than a toaster. At its heart is the same kind of telescope that Isaac Newton invented: a round mirror with a curved surface gathers faint light, which is then magnified for human viewers. In the spacecraft, a more complex version of this telescope points down toward Earth rather than up at the stars, gathering faint reflections from ground objects. Color and black-and-white television cameras then turn the resulting images into radio signals beamed to Earth. Eastman Kodak, a top Federal contractor for optical espionage, built the telescope system. Its main mirror is 27 inches wide and so smooth that if it were 100 miles across the biggest bump would be 0.08 inches high. Overall, the telescope is about five feet long. This feat of miniaturization allows the launching to be relatively low cost and is the kind of technical advance helping make possible the new generation of civil spy satellites. Speeding around the planet at four miles a second, the spacecraft is to orbit once every 98 minutes, passing over all regions except the poles and able to photograph any particular spot on the ground once every one-to-three days. The craft is known as Ikonos 1, after the Greek word for image. "We believe it will fundamentally change the approach to many forms of information that we use in business and our private lives," said John R. Copple, the chief executive of Space Imaging. The first photos will go up for sale two to three months after the satellite goes into orbit, company officials say. A second craft, Ikonos 2, is ready for launching, but the date has not been set. The satellites are identical and are designed to function for up to seven years. Copple, the company's head, said that photos from Ikonos (pronounced eye-KOH-nos) would cost $25 to $300 a square mile and that the minimum size of the ground area would probably be larger than a square mile. The company is taking orders and eventually plans to sell the imagery via its Web site, www.spaceimaging.com. Commercial rivals also eager to launch this year are Orbimage, of Dulles, Va., and Earthwatch, which is still hard at work despite its 1997 setback. Both companies are building satellites with one-meter resolution. Copple of Space Imaging said that military organizations from the United States and other countries would make up half his company's market at first but that their share would dwindle as civilians discovered the images. "The marketplace will surprise us all," he said. Some experts worry about unhappy surprises, like terrorists' exploiting the imagery to plan attacks, for example. "I don't think the Administration has thought through the implications," said Henry Sokolski, a Pentagon official in the Bush Administration who now runs the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a private group in Washington. In one twist, civilians are already using space photographs to track military arms. Such uses are expected to skyrocket as more powerful cameras come into play. Experts say such prying can promote peace by reducing military secrecy and false governmental claims. "It provides an independent check on what the government is saying, for example about mass graves and other wartime atrocities in the Balkans," said John E. Pike, head of a space-reconnaissance project at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington. Since 1994, when Clinton allowed commercial interests to use the powerful technology, the most contentious issue has been how to keep foes from getting the new images, especially in wartime. The Commerce Department, which licenses the craft, demands that Washington be allowed to exercise what experts call "shutter control," basically an abrupt cutoff of image sales. To date, no restrictions have been proposed publicly for the Balkans, and industry officials say they expect none. "We're fighting an air war," not one on the ground where the massing of troops for a surprise assault could be a key factor, said Copple of Space Imaging. "From a military standpoint, the only thing it's good for is damage assessment." But other experts disagree, saying important details of allied military planning might be jeopardized by the new images, "particularly if we're building up for ground troops," said Pike of the Federation of American Scientists. Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, head of the United States Space Command, which orchestrates the nation's military space activities, said earlier this month that Washington had yet to think through what to do in times of armed conflict. "There's going to be risk in operations like this when you're selling what can be used against you," he told the annual meeting of the United States Space Foundation, a private space-policy group. Keith R. Hall, the director of the National Reconnaissance Office, told the same group that today's scheduled lofting of the commercial spy satellite would force the issue. "We're just in the beginning stages of developing the policies on this," he said, adding that the launching "will probably be the impetus for the Government to get its act together." New York Today <http://www.nytoday.com> Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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