The recent spate of messages re: USA 129 has got me wondering about the common names given to these satellites. Apparently USA 129 and USA 116 are the Keyhole spy satellites (are there others?). Why aren't these satellites called Keyhole 1 & 2 (for example) or KH-13 (or whatever series it's up to). Putting it differently, the Lacrosse sats are named Lacrosse N (and NOSS sats NOSS N) but the Keyhole sats are USA NNN, why? Putting it differently again, why do some of the classified sats have names that reflect their "real" names and others have the USA designation? What is the source of these names (since it isn't USSPACECOM)? And does USA 129 mean it's the 129th classified sat launched? Or are there other criteria? Robert Fenske, Jr. rfenske@swri.edu Sw |The Taming the C*sm*s series: Southwest Research Institute /R---\ | Signal Exploitation & Geolocation Div | I | |"The Martian canals were the San Antonio,Texas USA ph:210-522-3931 \----/ | Martians' last ditch effort." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 19 2000 - 06:06:12 PDT