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space spying

Space Shuttles. NASA was also supposed to help the
International Space Station.
Considering its overall activities, NASA is quite
big in operational parts: more than 17 thousand RefeRence links
people work for NASA. Many people work with the https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/
agency as government contractors. It means, NASA NSAEBB509/
pays many agencies to hire relevant people as NASA http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1737/1
combines a workforce that needs a variety of jobs. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1734/1
Therefore, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) stands on its on own feet http://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/
as an independent agency of the United States news/articles/2018/2018-02.pdf
Federal Government and NASA is responsible for http://www.nro.gov
the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
and aerospace research. It was established for better United_States_Space_Command
understanding our mother Earth through the Earth
Observing System. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/
Now we can go on writing thousands of words a182087.pdf
on NASA’s peaceful space exploration and scientific https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.
endeavour, as it merges various branches of nasa.gov/19910011416.pdf
astrophysics. So NASA’s role was very clear: it would https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/newly-
conduct all non-military space activities. declassified-document-about-spy-satellites-
And for the development of space technology on-the-1795124683
for military applications, the Advanced Research https://www.scribd.com/document/348134338/
Projects Agency (ARPA) was established in Declassifying-the-Fact-of-the-NRO-s-Use-of-
February 1958. the-Space-Shuttle-as-a-Launch-Vehicle
Almost at the same time, during the 1960s,
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) started its op- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon
erations but it had been highly secret. Why? It was https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti-
because at that time peering down into the activities cle-2078612/Cold-War-secrets-cloak-dagger-
of the Soviet Union and communist China, using very guys-finally-revealed-nearly-45-years.html
powerful satellites was necessary. It was important https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20111226/
to count down how many strategic weapon systems news/712269995/
the Soviets and Chinese governments had in their
possession. What NRO was doing very simple, they
tried to determine what the Communist blocks were
doing. Were they capable to attack America any
time? The US government had to find the answer.
It was clearly defined that the NRO would keep respective fields and they were no less capable than
observing enemy country’s activities closely using NASA engineers and scientists. They supplied the
space. According to the letter written on 28th August highly-capable reconnaissance technology to NASA
1963, by the Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNa- for the Apollo program.
mara to the administrator of NASA James E. Webb It is also mysterious at the same time. While this
“DoD/CIA is represented by their joint operational space reconnaissance program was highly secret,
unit, the NRO”. According to this brief statement, then why NRO had made it public? It really surprises
NRO is a great secret assortment of American Intel- the pundits about this revealed truth. Actually, the
ligence Agencies and Military Agencies. From 1963 to Lunar Mapping and Survey System was not clas-
2018, NRO should have acquired lots of power. sified and available on the Internet from the very
It was nothing new that the US was launching beginning although that seemed quite logical as the
satellites into orbit to conduct espionage. However, US government tried to project NASA as a civilian
admitting them was an altogether a different issue, space program.
because US government felt, quite rightly, admitting However, the debate inside the US intelligence
such espionage would attract unnecessary attention and military agencies was going on: being NASA
and possibly would encourage the Soviets to take a civilian space research organization would it be
countermeasures. wise to give them such highly-capable advanced
Now these NRO folks were specialists in their reconnaissance tools? It was quite evident that NASA

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