Word: vela
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Perhaps the most famous and oft-cited example of collaboration between America, Israel and South Africa can be found in a series of charges and counter-charges leveled in 1979. On September 22 of that year, a U.S. Vela Satellite linked to the Los Alamos Observatory recorded an atmospheric nuclear explosion in the South Atlantic. A radio telescope at the U.S. observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Navy Research Laboratory both picked up signs of the blast as well. At a CIA briefing to Congress, it was revealed that a South African naval task force had been...
...month later, ABC News reported that something had happened, and the previously silent State Department, Pentagon and CIA acknowledged that a nuclear bomb had indeed been detected. But the White House, after forming a task force to cope with a public outcry, officially concluded that the Vela Satellite, after correctly identifying 41 nuclear explosions between 1969 and 1979, had made an error on its 42nd detection. British scientists reported that at the U.S. National Technical and Information Services, which records date on nuclear explosions, ordinary information for the period in question was missing...
Since 1963, the Pentagon's Vela satellites have been vigilantly circling the earth, using their electronic sensors to detect radiation from surreptitious nuclear explosions outside the U.S. Though these orbital watchdogs have identified only a few suspicious events, they have accidentally uncovered a major astronomical mystery: violent outbursts of energy, in the form of X rays and gamma rays, that are observable only above the earth's atmospheric shield. Such puzzling "highenergy transients," as scientists call them, rarely last more than ten seconds, yet they pack a wallop as great as a billion billion one-megaton H-bombs...
...ferret" satellites, or electronic ears, that can eavesdrop on radio transmissions. In addition, the Pentagon has various scientific satellites, including ones that measure minuscule variations in the earth's gravity, information that helps keep missiles on target. Parked far out in space are the Defense Department's Vela satellites, which watch out for bursts of high-energy radiation that may indicate a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, or the eruption of a distant celestial body. Under development is a system called Navstar (for Navigation Satellite Timing and Ranging) that will enable nuclear submarines and other vessels to know...
...United States Vela reconnaisance satellite monitored two rapid, bright flashes of light off the coast of South Africa on the night of September 22 which U.S. government analysts attributed to a nuclear explosion. South Africa denied detonating a nuclear device...