Satellite Monitoring of Arms Control Agreements
 The
adversarial relationship between the United States and the Soviet
Union during the Cold War meant that the U.S. needed assurance that
the Soviet Union was complying with the provisions of the 1963 Limited
Test Ban Treaty.
To accomplish the challenging task of remotely
monitoring Soviet weapon testing, a family of satellites, code-named
"Vela," was launched, later to be replaced by the Defense
Support Program (DSP) and Global Positioning System satellites (GPS)
still in use today.
Star Chart
The first satellite monitoring program was named for the Southern
Hemisphere constellation Vela. More
Global Positioning System (GPS) Satellite Model
Multi-functional satellites such as this one began being used in
1989.
Bhangmeters
Detection devices called bhangmeters are part of the evolution of
optical sensing. More
Titan IIIC
A vehicle such as this placed the last six Vela satellites into
orbit.
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