An amateur astronomer believes he has captured the first image of an ultra-secretive US spacecraft.
Felix Schöfbänker, from Austria, claims to have photographed a classified fleet of spy satellites operated by a shadowy DoD agency to hunt international terrorists, drug dealers and crime lords for the US government.
The (Future Imagery Architecture) FIA-Radars, also called Topaz, are five craft made by Boeing which are powerful enough to provide high definition imaging of targets on the ground 24 hours of the day.
Using a telescope built to track and photograph satellites, Schöfbänker observed 'things that either were not known or only were speculated before' - including their size, shape and position in the sky.
The US launched its first spy satellite, CORONA, in 1960 to photograph adversaries in China and the Soviet Union with a focus on how rapidly the latter was producing long-range bombers and ballistic missiles and where they were being deployed.
The satellite imagery captured all Soviet medium-range, intermediate-range, and intercontinental ballistic missile launching complexes.
'Without CORONA, the US may well have been misguidedly pressured into a World War III,' the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) shared in a statement.
The US leads the world with more than 200 in space and Schöfbänker has observed several in the past few months.
The sky watcher recently shared his discoveries with Space.com, detailing mechanics and technologies he observed.
His telescope, a Dobsonian, spotted several FIA-Radars fitted with a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which enables the US to beam radar through clouds, foliage and shallow soil.
The images are taken by sending microwave pulses to the Earth's surface and measuring the reflected signals.
Topaz is a series of five satellites developed by Boeing, with the first launching in 2010 and the last in 2018.
The US government has been secretive about the capabilities, only sharing details that Topaz 1 had a nuclear power system, an attitude control system and a cylindrical monocoque aluminum structure.
While it is unclear which model Schöfbänker observed, he was able to make out other details.
'From my images, I conclude that these satellites have a parabolic mesh antenna which is roughly 12 meters [39 feet] in diameter, and two solar panels with roughly 10 meters [33 feet] of wingspan,' he told Space.com.
'There also is another bright object between the solar panels that I interpret as an up-and down-link antenna, though this also might be something else.'
Schöfbänker continued to explain that the satellite's antenna moved six times to the left and 22 times to the right during his observations.
Also in his sights was a few KH-11 satellites, which convert light into electronic signals.
The KH-11, developed by Lockheed Martin, is believed to use a seven-foot prime mirror that allows the satellite to identify objects as small as three inches across.
The first KH-11 launched in December 1976, allowing the first real-time collection of intelligence as it previously took days or even weeks for photos.
The need for real-time observations was often stated by officials during key events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Six-Day War or the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
In 2019, Donald Trump, president at the time, shared a classified image of an Iranian rocket launch site captured by a KH-11 that launched in 2011.
There are four of these satellites in orbit.
'The oldest one currently up there was launched in 2005. It is a third-generation KH-11 with the name USA 186. The next two are called USA 224 and USA 245, and these are the fourth generation from 2011 and 2013,' Schöfbänker said.
'The newest one is a fifth-generation spacecraft from 2021 and is called USA 314.'
His observations suggested that they were about 36 feet long, with mirrors ranging in size depending on the generation.
The space watcher determined there were three generations of KH-11 orbiting above, with the fourth's mirror measuring nearly 10 feet across.
On July 20, Schöfbänker uploaded a timelapse of a satellite on his website, which may be one of the most secretive in America's arsenal.
Schöfbänker suggested it was a USA 290 or another KH-11, but noted that images did not match up with the latter and the two were launched into different orbits.
Based on the observations, he determined that the spacecraft featured a 16-foot-long panel and had a total size of around 31 feet.
The USA 290 also captures intelligence in real-time, but that is all that is known about America's secretive spy satellite.
