Japanese lawmakers voted Friday to allow the military use of space, breaking a decades-old taboo in the officially pacifist country which has an increasingly ambitious space programme. The move will remove any legal obstacles to building more advanced spy satellites.
A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and could hit the Earth in late February or early March, government officials said Saturday.
A large American spy satellite has lost power and is expected to crash back to Earth sometime late next month. A spokesman with the U.S. National Security Council refused to speculate on the possibility that the satellite may be shot down by a missile to prevent any debris causing damage.
Military space reconnaissance capabilities are proliferating. This week, the U.S., Israel, India, China and Brazil could advance their commercial, technological and strategic interests with new milsats set to be launched. Once aloft, the satellites will look into each other's backyards and try to steal each other's customers. And they all will be watching Iran.
The Bush administration is planning to give domestic law enforcement agencies increased access to powerful spy satellite technology. But some lawmakers and civil liberties groups say that the program may invade the privacy of Americans.
A new plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance.
The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers.
The Bush administration has decided to expand the government's use of information from U.S. spy satellites for homeland security and domestic law-enforcement purposes. Officials say the change is intended primarily to help them monitor the borders and coastal areas. But it is also raising some serious privacy concerns.
Israel embarks on a major expansion of its military space capabilities with the upcoming launch of the Ofeq-7 imaging satellite and at least three additional spacecraft by 2011.
Israel's military launched a spy satellite toward space early Monday, the Defense Ministry said, and a senior official suggested it could help keep track of developments in Iran.