Military Applications
As early as 1989, it was reported that an important function of TDRSS was to provide data relay for the Lacrosse radar imaging reconnaissance satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office.
Almost twenty years later, on November 23, 2007, an on-line trade publication noted, "While NASA uses the (TDRSS) satellites to communicate with the space shuttle and international space station, most of their bandwidth is devoted to the Pentagon, which covers the lion's share of TDRSS operations costs and is driving many of the system's requirements, some of them classified."
In October 2008, the NRO declassified the existence of mission ground stations in the US called Aerospace Data Facility (ADF)- Colorado, ADF-East and ADF-Southwest near Denver, Colorado, Washington, D.C. and Las Cruces, New Mexico, respectively. ADF-Colorado and ADF-East are known to be located at Buckley AFB, CO and Fort Belvoir, Virginia; ADF-Southwest is located at White Sands Missile Range, assumed to be at the White Sands TDRSS station.
Read more about this topic: Tracking And Data Relay Satellite System
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