Tyler Rogoway
For over 50 years the Pentagon has had early warning satellites in orbit aimed at spotting launches of ballistic missiles, especially the big intercontinental kind that can fly around the globe in less than 30 minutes and bring about nuclear Armageddon. Recently, these satellites have made news for their “secondary capabilities,” spotting the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 and Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. These are the shadowy satellites that are capable of such amazing feats, and an idea of how they work.
In 1960, at the height of the Cold War and at the dawn of the space age, the first Missile Defense Alarm System (MiDAS) satellite was launched into low earth orbit. Six years later there was a constellation of nine of these satellites roaming the heavens, each scanning the Soviet Union for large infrared plumes, the tell-tale sign of a ballistic missile or rocket launch.
These fairly crude, low-earth orbit satellites, along with the radar-based Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, would be the basis for a Cold War ballistic missile surveillance system that would become ever more complex and capable as the years went by. If ballistic missile launches were detected and deemed a threat, the decision to retaliate would mean the National Command Authority making the call to do so within half an hour, an act that could bring an the end of humanity’s reign on Earth, permanently.
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/these-are-the-doomsday-satellites-that-detected-the-exp-1737434876www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmszJtxRZIs
