Declassified UK:
Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) sent its first earth imaging satellite, named Tyche, into space in August 2024.
Declassified used open-source two-line element (TLE) data and a propagation algorithm to determine where the satellite had gone since September 2024, and calculated the imaging swath based on the scene width, resolution, and inclination of the satellite.
The analysis of Tyche’s recent movements indicates the satellite increased passes over Iran before the Twelve-Day War last June as well as the latest conflict. The data was compared with randomly chosen locations in Mexico and western Europe with the same measurement area to assess if the increase in passes over Iran was not part of a broader trend. No significant increase was observed in these other areas over the same period.
While the MoD says Tyche’s orbit has not been deliberately altered, the number of passes over Iran spiked from 12 in April last year to 39 in May and 50 in June, representing an overall increase of over 300%.
Tyche passed over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Amand missile base just north of Tabriz, the IRGC Aerospace Force’s air defence command in Tehran, and the Parachin military complex, shortly before those sites were attacked.
[RT]
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