How Satellites Helped Take Down Osama

So the nine-and-a-half-year hunt for Osama bin Laden is over. For America it's been a painful and controversial process as our military and intelligence agencies kept up the search, in spite of all the political and legal controversy. The operation against the head of al-Qaeda was an integrated effort that demanded the best efforts from everyone involved, and America's military and civilian space professionals deserve at least a small share of the credit.

First of all we should praise the men and women who run the spy satellites. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) should take a (quiet) bow. The satellites they control were able to pinpoint bin Laden's mansion and, using their archives of space-derived imagery, they and their colleagues at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) were able to determine when it was built and what many of its special characteristics were.

Satellite surveillance was also an essential adjunct to the on-the-ground work done by the CIA. Space imagery has long been able to confirm or disprove information that comes from human spies. Obviously it is not a perfect way to check on everything that sources say, but it is pretty good. If a spy said that there was an airplane on a particular runway at a particular time and if the evidence from the satellite says otherwise, one can draw conclusions about the reliability of the spy's other intelligence.…