Global effort tracks classified satellites
Charles Phillips waits until the sun sets on a cold day and then carries his Nikon D200 to a baseball field behind his house.
He places his tripod on the pitcher’s mound, opens the Orbitrack app and waits for a satellite to move over the horizon.
He can’t see the satellite, but the app shows its path. So Phillips pointshis camera at a star it’s supposed to pass and starts taking pictures. He won’t know if he captured it until later, while adjusting the photo’s brightness on his computer, if a faint, streaky line appears in the picture.
“I just take pictures of the sky,” Phillips said, “and you have no idea if you’ve got it or not. It’s not a glamorous thing to do.”
But he feels it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Phillips is part of a small, international group that tracks classified satellites. These individuals, subscribed to the SeeSat-L email list, seek to create amore robust record of space activity, to better track what’s circling the globe and to knowwhen objects might re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.
Plus, it’s fun.
“The members in our group are very diverse in the reasons why they do it,” saidMarco Langbroek, who lives in the Netherlands and has been an active contributor since 2005. “I think we all share in one reason: Because
we can. Because it’s exciting to see something we’re not supposed to see.”
The U.S. Space Force maintains a public database of satellites, and it typically provides detailed information on the satellite’s orbit, including its altitude and how long it takes to make one trip around the Earth. But for some classified satellites, the Space Force does not disclose information on the satellite’s orbital position.
“U.S. Space Command is responsible for the protection and defense of the space domain,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Space Command, which directs military forces as they move beyond the purview of gravity. “We continuously work to find the right balance between sharing details about our capabilities with the public and securing information that our adversaries would use against us.”
There are various arguments for why a satellite’s position should not be kept secret. Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation, said having classified satellites hinders the ability to share data on orbital debris and close approaches.
But also, why go through the effort of keeping something secret if amateur observers, commercial companies and other governments can find them?
“If I can track it fromClear Lake with a used camera, it’s ridiculous they don’t reveal the orbital parameters,” Phillips said.
Phillips began tracking satellites as a hobby about two years ago, but it’s also how he started his career. He was tracking satellites as an officer in the Air Force when the Skylab space station reentered Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA thought it would begin breaking up over the southern tip of Africa and fall into the Indian Ocean. But it broke up later than anticipated. Much of the debris that didn’t burn up in Earth’s atmosphere fell into the Indian Ocean, but some pieces fell over sparsely populated areas of Western Australia, according to NASA.
“A lot of itwas sheer luck,” Phillips said. “It definitely did stick with me.”
He thinks the public should know when these objects are going to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, even if they’re likely to fall into the ocean.
So after taking pictures of the night sky, Phillips uploads the images to his computer and adjusts the brightness for each photo.
When he sees streaks of light, created by the satellite’s move
ment during the 10 seconds that the camera’s shutterwas open, he uploads the photo to astrometry.net. This produces a string of letters and numbers that identifies the satellite and its position.
Phillips then sends this information to another member of the SeeSat-L list who maintains a robust catalog of classified satellites.
This information is used to update various software programs and apps such as Orbitrack so satellite observers can continue following the objects and making observations to keep their orbits up to date.
Phillips’ technique is just one way of tracking satellites. Observers have a variety of methods that they tend to learn over time, Lang
broek said.
There are roughly 15 people who routinely contribute data to the SeeSat-L list. These individuals use binoculars and stopwatches, digital cameras and video cameras to track about 200 classified satellites.
At its peak, membersof the SeeSat-L list were tracking some 400 classified satellites, but the United
States has slowly begun declassifying some of these.
Langbroek likes to analyze the orbits of classified satellites to try to determine their functions. He wants to create transparency around what militaries are doing in space because their actions could have global ramifications. Modern societies depend on nonclassified satellites for communication, navigation and many other facets of daily life.
And based on his participation in SeeSat-L, Langbroek was asked to appear at a parliamentary committee hearing in the Netherlands regarding the missile that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people. Langbroek was asked about what foreign military satellites might have observed the firing of that missile.
In Houston, this hobby is best pursued when it’s cold outside. Cold fronts bring drier air, whereas Houston’s hazy summer sky is not ideal for this hobby.
Cold fronts also bring rain and, thus, mud. But Phillips is undeterred, soldiering out once or twice aweek in his quest for transparency.
“To look at these satellites that are going to re-enter and say, ‘Hey, look out!’ It seems like the responsible thing to do,” he said.