Defense & Intelligence Policy, Business and Technology

Future Spy Satellites Just Got Exponentially Smaller

Nextgov: Future spy satellites may unfold like origami birds, collecting image data along long, flat sensor arrays that weigh almost nothing. By replacing the bulky telescopic lenses that make today’s spy sats among the biggest and most expensive things in space, light-sensitive microchips promise far cheaper access to orbital imagery.

Last month, Lockheed Martin released the first images from its experimental Segmented Planar Imaging Detector for Electro-optical Reconnaissance, or SPIDER, program. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, SPIDER is basically a telescope on a microchip. But it collects light data very differently from a conventional telescope.

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