Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!nickw
From: nickw@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Nick Watkins)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: "Magnum" Electronic Intelligence Satellite
Message-ID: <4464@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Date: 11 Feb 91 12:07:17 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.162419.10194@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Sussex
Lines: 21

From article <1991Feb5.162419.10194@zoo.toronto.edu>, by henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer):
> In article <15325@celit.fps.com> dave@fps.com (Dave Smith) writes:

>>antenna "the size of a baseball field."  This sounds like a really large
>>structure to be deploying automatically.  Does anyone have any info
> What you've just said -- it's called "Magnum", it's an eavesdropping
> satellite, and it probably has a big deployable antenna -- is just about
> the sum total of unclassified knowledge about it.
And the best of the rest is in Des Ball's superb book, "Pine Gap"
[ Allen and Unwin Australia]. One of 3 main ground stations is in
Australia at eponymous Pine Gap.

Includes a nice sketch of a Lockheed design for a deployable large
antenna. Remember ATS 6 and imagine what you could do with another 10
years or so and a Shuttle payload bay (less IUS). Probably 2 in orbit,
possibly even 3 if last military Shuttle was 28 degrees -> GEO
not LEO (I don't know). Reportly it's follow on to the RHYOLITE/AQUACADE
series of Atlas Agena D (sic) launches in the seventies. 

Nick
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