TDRSS ground station expansion?

I was looking at the original TDRSS ground station (32.502 N, 106.611
W) in Google Earth historical imagery and noticed that a substantial
addition was made to the existing building between 2005 and the last
available imagery in 2007. There's also a new big (19 m diameter)
round thing just south of the TDRSS antennas, but I can't tell if it's
a water tower, dish or what. In addition, quite a bit of additional
parking was added, which is curious because a) the existing parking
was greatly underused, at least in the period of available imagery
(1998-2007) and b) the ground station is advertised as highly
automated, so what's going to be the need for so many people?

Does anybody here know what the expansion is for? I have a WAG, but
would rather get Ye Readers' inputs before saying what it is.


======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
This may end up tending towards policy than actualy technical issues, but let's see where it goes. GdM

On May 25, 9:18 am, Allen Thomson wrote:
I was looking at the original TDRSS ground station (32.502 N, 106.611
W) in Google Earth historical imagery and noticed that a substantial
addition was made to the existing building between 2005 and the last
available imagery in 2007. There's also a new big (19 m diameter)
round thing just south of the TDRSS antennas, but I can't tell if it's
a water tower, dish or what. In addition, quite a bit of additional
parking was added, which is curious because a) the existing parking
was greatly underused, at least in the period of available imagery
(1998-2007) and b) the ground station is advertised as highly
automated, so what's going to be the need for so many people?

Does anybody here know what the expansion is for? I have a WAG, but
would rather get Ye Readers' inputs before saying what it is.

======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
This may end up tending towards policy than actualy technical issues, but let's see where it goes. GdM

My personal experience with NASA and it's contractors has
been excellent, in that I've emailed questions and have received
excellent replies and had some good discussions.

Usually NASA is separate from the military, but in some
cases things may overlap such as in this TDRSS at
White Sands,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TDRSS#M...y_Applications
and NASA may not respond.
You can ask them, but I think that info is classified.
Ken

There's also a new big (19 m diameter) round thing just south of the TDRSS antennas,

There's another one at the northern TDRSS site, 32.542 N, 106.612 W,
that appeared in the same period of time, so I think it's also an
antenna. Interestingly, in the last available imagery (27 May 2007) of
the northern site, it looks as if the foundations for two more
antennas had been started. This starts to look like a non-trivial
expansion of relay satellite capability.

Thanks to Ken Tucker and OM for the advice on contacting NASA. I'll do
that and see what they say.

Considering the present threat of cyber-spying, I wonder if the DOD is
going to be using TDRSS for transmitting classified data point-to-point
on the Earth so as to avoid any use of the internet or landlines, which
could be compromised.

I'm sure that they are assuming any comms, whatever the actual technical
means, are potentially compromised. That's why you use end-to-end
encrpytion (e.g., SSL/TSL). Denial-of-service would be another matter -
that might conceivably motivate using an alternate path.

Jan