Defense Support Program

Mm-hmm.

The DSP satellite system was created to look back at Earth and monitor for missile launches and stuff from, like, China, Russia, whatever.

Mm-hmm.

This is the middle of the Cold War.

Um, and the DSP system picked up an object coming from deep space that night and going to Tehran.

Whoa.

Yeah.

It looked similar to a star, but bigger and brighter.

Yeah.

The, uh, the original, the OG program was called DSP, Defense Support Program, and those are satellites in geosynchronous orbit that were designed to detect infrared signatures.

Uh, there's actually a really incredible photograph online, a DSP satellite which was actually launched by the space shuttle.

So you see a DSP satellite getting like lifted out of the space shuttle, uh, before it, you know, boosted itself all the way up to geo, which is, you know, just kind of cool and neat.

When you look at the space world, there have been military operations going on in space for quite some time, since before I was born.

The Sibbers mission, which was originally, before that, its predecessor was the Defense Support Program, a series of satellites that provide missile warning coverage.

That's a program that is over 50 years old.

And in fact, before that, it was originally the Midas program, which was kind of the original demonstrator for that concept.