Discoverer II
Discoverer II (initially known as STARLITE) was a joint DARPA, Air Force, and National Reconnaissance Office project to build and launch a low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation for space-based radar. The project began in 1998 but was canceled by Congress in 2000. The Discoverer II concept dates back to June 1996, when the Director of Central Intelligence's Small Satellite Review Panel concluded that: "...now is an appropriate time to make a qualitative change in the systems architecture of the nation's reconnaissance assets... We see the opportunity to move towards an operational capability for the country, at least for imagery systems, that consists of an array of smaller, cheaper spacecraft in larger numbers which is at least as useful as those currently planned and to transport them to space with substantially smaller and less costly launch vehicles." The Defense Science Board (DSB) was then asked to establish a Task Force on Satellite Reconnaissance (the so-called "Hermann P ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Discoverer II System Parameters, DARPA, November 21, 1998
Discoverer may refer to: Ships * MS ''World Discoverer'' cruise ship wrecked off the Solomon Islands in 2000 * ''Discoverer Clear Leader'' double-hulled dynamically positioned drillship (2007), sister ships are ** '' Discoverer Americas'' ** '' Discoverer Inspiration'' ** '' Discoverer Luanda'' ** '' Discoverer India'' * ''Discoverer Enterprise'' double-hulled dynamically positioned drillship (1999), sister ships are ** ''Discoverer Spirit'' ** '' Discoverer Deep Seas'' * '' Silver Discoverer'' cruise ship * '' Coral Discoverer'' cruise ship * USC&GS ''Discoverer'', the name of two ships of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Other uses * Corona satellites, a 1959-1962 classified U.S. military satellite program publicly labeled the ''Discoverer'' non-military scientific program * ''The Discoverer'', a novel by Norwegian author Jan Kjærstad * "Discoverer" (R.E.M. song) * ''The Discoverers'', a non-fiction book * ''The Discoverers'', film directed and written by Justi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created on February 7, 1958, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet Union, Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957. By collaborating with academia, industry, and government partners, DARPA formulates and executes research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, often beyond immediate U.S. military requirements.Dwight D. Eisenhower and Science & Technology, (2008). Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial CommissionSource The name of the organization first changed from its founding name, ARPA, to DARPA, in March 1972, changing back to ARPA in February 1993, then reverted to DARPA in March 1996. ''The Economist'' has called DARPA "the agency that ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Reconnaissance Office
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government. It provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT) to the National Security Agency (NSA), imagery intelligence (IMINT) to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The NRO announced in 2023 that it plans within the following decade to quadruple the number of satellites it operates and increase the number of signals and images it delivers by a factor of ten. NRO is considered, along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), NSA, DIA, and NGA, to be one of the "big five" U.S. intelligence agencies. The NRO is headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, south of Wa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Low Earth Orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, peaking in number at an altitude around , while the farthest in LEO, before medium Earth orbit (MEO), have an altitude of 2,000 km, about one-third of the Earth radius, radius of Earth and near the beginning of the Van Allen radiation belt#Inner belt, inner Van Allen radiation belt. The term ''LEO region'' is used for the area of space below an altitude of (about one-third of Earth's radius). Objects in orbits that pass through this zone, even if they have an apogee further out or are sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital, are carefully tracked since they present a collision risk to the many LEO satellites. No human spaceflights other than the lunar missions of the Apollo program (1968-1972) have gone beyond L ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Space-based Radar
Space-based radar or spaceborne radar is a radar operating in outer space; orbiting radar is a radar in orbit and Earth orbiting radar is a radar in geocentric orbit. A number of Earth-observing satellites, such as RADARSAT, have employed synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to obtain terrain and land-cover information about the Earth. Military In the United States, Discoverer II was a proposed military space-based radar program initiated in February 1998 as a joint Air Force, DARPA, and National Reconnaissance Office, NRO program. The concept was to provide high-range-resolution ground moving target indication (GMTI), as well as SAR imaging and high-resolution digital mapping. This program was cancelled by Congress in 2007. SBR is a less-ambitious version of Discoverer II. Space-based radar (SBR) is a proposed constellation of active radar satellites for the United States Department of Defense. The SBR system would allow detection and tracking of aircraft, ocean-going vessels ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Director Of Central Intelligence
The director of central intelligence (DCI) was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1946 to 2004, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the president of the United States and the United States National Security Council, as well as the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various US intelligence agencies (collectively known as the Intelligence Community from 1981 onwards). The office existed from January 1946 to December 17, 2004. After the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act it was replaced by the director of national intelligence (DNI) as head of the Intelligence Community and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) as head of the CIA. History The post of DCI was established by President Harry Truman on January 23, 1946, with Admiral Sidney Souers being the first DCI, followed by General Hoyt Vandenberg who served as DCI from June 1946 to May 1947. The DCI then ran the Central ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Defense Science Board
The Defense Science Board (DSB) is a committee of civilian experts appointed to advise the U.S. Department of Defense on scientific and technical matters. It was established in 1956 on the second Hoover Commission's recommendation. Charter The Board's charter states its mission as: The Board shall provide the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, as requested, other Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Principal Staff Assistants, the Secretaries of the Military Departments, the Commanders of the Combatant Commands, independent advice and recommendations on scientific, technical, manufacturing, acquisition process, and other matters of special interest to the Department of Defense. The Board is not established to advise on individual DoD procurements, but instead shall be concerned with the pressing and complex technology problems facing t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Synthetic-aperture Radar
Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that is used to create two-dimensional images or three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR uses the motion of the radar antenna over a target region to provide finer spatial resolution than conventional stationary beam-scanning radars. SAR is typically mounted on a moving platform, such as an aircraft or spacecraft, and has its origins in an advanced form of side looking airborne radar (SLAR). The distance the SAR device travels over a target during the period when the target scene is illuminated creates the large ''synthetic'' antenna aperture (the ''size'' of the antenna). Typically, the larger the aperture, the higher the image resolution will be, regardless of whether the aperture is physical (a large antenna) or synthetic (a moving antenna) – this allows SAR to create high-resolution images with comparatively small physical antennas. For a fixed antenna size and orientation, objects which are ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Moving Target Indication
Moving target indication (MTI) is a mode of operation of a radar to discriminate a target against the clutter. It describes a variety of techniques used for finding moving objects, like an aircraft, and filter out unmoving ones, like hills or trees. It contrasts with the modern stationary target indication (STI) technique, which uses details of the signal to directly determine the mechanical properties of the reflecting objects and thereby find targets whether they are moving or not. Early MTI systems generally used an acoustic delay line to store a single pulse of the received signal for exactly the time between broadcasts (the pulse repetition frequency). This stored pulse will be sent to the display along with the next received pulse. The result was that the signal from any objects that did not move mixed with the stored signal and became muted out. Only signals that changed, because they moved, remained on the display. These were subject to a wide variety of noise effects th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interferometric Synthetic-aperture Radar
Interferometric synthetic aperture radar, abbreviated InSAR (or deprecated IfSAR), is a radar technique used in geodesy and remote sensing. This geodetic method uses two or more synthetic aperture radar (SAR) radar imaging, images to generate maps of surface deformation or digital elevation map, digital elevation, using differences in the Phase (waves), phase of the waves returning to the satellite or aircraft. The technique can potentially measure millimetre-scale changes in deformation over spans of days to years. It has applications for geophysical monitoring of natural hazards, for example earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides, and in structural engineering, in particular monitoring of subsidence and structural stability. Technique Synthetic aperture radar Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar in which sophisticated processing of radar data is used to produce a very narrow effective beam. It can be used to form images of relatively immobile targets; moving ta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lockheed Martin
The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North Bethesda, Maryland, United States. As of January 2022, Lockheed Martin employs approximately 121,000 employees worldwide, including about 60,000 engineers and scientists. Reports from 2024 estimate that Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT) holds a market cap of around $139.7 billion. Lockheed Martin is one of the largest companies in the aerospace, military support, security, and technologies industry. It was the world's largest defense contractor by revenue for fiscal year 2014.POC Top 20 Defence Contractors of 2014 . Retrieved: July 2015 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |