Outer space

Amateur Astronomer Spots US Spy Satellite

The latest US spy satellite sent into orbit on June 11th has already been spotted in space, undoing its purported secrecy. Sky News reported that an amateur astronomer in Australia, Paul Camilleri, made the find with help from Marco Langbroek's SatTrackCam blog.

The Leiden-based Langbroek wrote that "the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launched a classified payload from Cape Canaveral under the launch designation NROL-37. It was a launch into geosynchronous orbit using a Delta IV-Heavy rocket."

According to Langbroek, the NROL-37 was widely rumored to be Mentor 7, the newest in a class of surveillance satellites that the NRO has been sending into space since 1995. Also known as Advanced Orion satellites, they gather signals intelligence (SIGINT) from orbit-that is, they eavesdrop on radio communications.

The exact missions and capabilities of such satellites remain classified. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) provided merely a brief description of the NROL-37's purpose as "in support of national defense."