Spy Satellite Agency Has Plans to Quadruple US Eyes in the Sky
- Office has goal to collect 10 times the images and signals
- Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’s Blue Origin may get launch contracts
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the NROL-87 spy satellite payload for the National Reconnaissance Office launched in Feb. 2, 2022.
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
The US intelligence agency that develops and buys spy satellites plans a fourfold increase by 2033 in orbiting spacecraft like those now being used to monitor Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Within the next decade we expect to quadruple the number of satellites we currently have on orbit,” the National Reconnaissance Office, once a super-secret agency, said in a statement Wednesday. “These satellites — large and small, in multiple orbits” will collect and transmit “ten times as many signals and images as we’re getting now, and will engage a mix of government and commercial systems.”