In article , says...

On Jan/13/2018 at 4:45 PM, David Spain wrote :
As I mentioned over on the A-Rocket mailing list. If the amateur
satellite tracking community finds it then I'd say it was a success at
least in the sense that it achieved orbit.

Rumors based on Congressional leakage is that it did not. If no
sightings are found by the tracking community I'd say that pretty well
sums it up as a failure.

Stealth technology does exist.

You simply can't completely hide the thermal signature of a satellite.
If it's "doing something useful" then it's producing and using energy
which means it's radiating heat (you can't escape the laws of
thermodynamics). You could theoretically do things like limit thermal
radiation emissions towards earth, but that would mean it is radiating
heat away from earth. So, it would still be quite visible from the
vantage point of, say, a GEO orbit. So, it would likely still be
visible to "our enemies". So what would the point be exactly?

If it's black, small and has a very small
radar signature, and if you make a small orbit change with a cold gas
thruster, it is very hard to spot it.

Hard, but not at all impossible. It will emit infrared radiation.
Also, with radar, we can currently track orbital debris down to about 4
inches (10 cm) in size. It's almost certain our enemies can do the
same.

Jeff
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