Zircon (satellite) - History

History

During the Cold War, Britain's GCHQ often used America's National Security Agency (NSA) for communications interception from space. Concern heightened at the time of the Falklands War. GCHQ requested access to American Signals Intelligence satellites to assist in monitoring Argentine communications, but reportedly struggled with the NSA to gain appropriate tasking time, despite the special relationship between the two countries. The United States satellites were engaged in monitoring SIGINT traffic elsewhere in South America related to El Salvador. GCHQ therefore decided to produce a UK-designed-and-built signals intelligence satellite, to be called Zircon, a code-name derived from zirconium silicate, a diamond substitute. Its function was to intercept radio and other signals from the USSR, Europe and other areas. The satellite was to be built at Marconi Space and Defence Systems at Portsmouth Airport, at which a new high security building had been built. It was to be launched on a NASA Space Shuttle under the guise of Skynet IV. Launch on the Shuttle would have entitled a British National to fly as a Mission Specialist and a group of military pilots were presented to the press as candidates for 'Britain's first man in space'.

Zircon was cancelled by Chancellor Nigel Lawson on grounds of its cost in 1987. However, Duncan Campbell, an investigative journalist working for New Statesman magazine, planned to make a BBC television programme about the project, part of a six-part series called Secret Society. Campbell's thesis was that the cost of the satellite had been hidden from the British Parliament, in particular the Public Accounts Committee.