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Comment by jcims | Hacker News Reader

I always imagine it creeping up on unsuspecting satellites like some kind of space puma. All up close and personal like, giving them a sniff and then slipping away undetected.

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It's tough to be sneaky in space...

Wasn't there a story somewhere awhile back that the Russians had launched satelites and yet strange movement of the supposedly jettisoned pieces was detected?

If the satellite has "local" sensing equipment, then sure there's nowhere to hide. How many satellites have that? If such sensors aren't installed, it's not like anyone down here on the ground will notice. If someone did notice, what could they do in response? Complain to the media?

Actually, it's pretty easy to keep track of the X-37. You could see where it would have been had it not landed here:

http://www.heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=40651&lat=0&ln...

If it was to get close to a non-US military satellite, one could expect people to complain diplomatically, at least.

If you wanted to rendezvous with a foreign spy satellite (I have no idea why you would) you couldn't do it in a huge space plane because diplomacy. You'd have to send a tiny non-trackable interceptor thing. If you needed a vehicle to deploy such things from, then perhaps the X-37 would make sense.

Amateurs have been tracking it [0] and even photographing it [1] while in orbit. Any government that has the capability to send satellites to space can do the same.

[0] http://www.space.com/8470-secret-37b-space-plane-spotted-ama...

[1] https://www.universetoday.com/65338/amateur-astronomer-image...

Actually, most objects of any size are actively tracked pretty much continually from the ground. That's especially true of a state's classified space plane.

What would be the point?

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