Future
It has been said that the B-2 bomber was originally intended to use directly down-linked targeting data from Lacrosse satellites in order to aid it in its role of hunting down and destroying Soviet mobile ICBM launchers. It had been anticipated that the Lacrosse satellites would be replaced by the radar component of the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA). The severe program problems encountered by FIA in the early 2000s (decade) appear to have led to off-loading of radar reconnaissance to the Space Based Radar, later simplified to Space Radar, with initial launch anticipated around 2015. This program itself was axed by Congress late 2008. The launch of NROL-41 (USA 215) in September 2010 has all orbital characteristics of a radar remote sensing platform (see FIA) and could be the first of a Lacrosse follow-up program. Its orbit is a retrograde version of the "frozen" Lacrosse orbit, the choice for a retrograde orbit itself indicating a SAR role.
Read more about this topic: Lacrosse (satellite)
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon—destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroy us. A nation that doesn’t read much doesn’t know much. And a nation that doesn’t know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.”
—Jim Trelease (20th century)
““Dark times” is what they call it in Norway when the sun remains below the horizon all day long: the temperature falls slowly but surely at such times.—A nice metaphor for all those thinkers for whom the sun of mankind’s future has temporarily disappeared.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“[M]y conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors and especially to harm the future generations of Americans. If many years ago we had had the necessary knowledge, and especially the necessary willingness on the part of the Federal Government, we would have saved a sum, a sum of money which has cost the taxpayers of America two billion dollars.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)