USA-207,[4] international COSPAR code 2009-047A,[5] also known as PAN, officially meaning Palladium at Night,[6] NEMESIS I,[7] or P360[8] is a classified American SIGINT satellite,[7] which was launched in September 2009. The US government has not confirmed which of its intelligence agencies operate the satellite,[9] but leaked documents from the Snowden files point to the NSA.[10] The spacecraft was constructed by Lockheed Martin, and is based on the A2100satellite bus,[6] using commercial off-the-shelf components.[8] The contract to build PAN was awarded in October 2006, with the satellite initially scheduled to launch 30 months later, in March 2009.[11]
PAN has shown an unusual history of frequent relocations during the first 5 years of its operations, moving between at least 9 different orbital slots since launch. With each move, it was placed close to another commercial communications satellite.[7] From 2013 onwards it was located at 47.7 deg E., over East Africa, staying in that position for several years. In February 2021 it started a slow drift eastwards.[14]
Gallery
The geostationary satellite PAN (2009-047A), along with two other (commercial) geostationary satellites photographed on 4 July 2011 (photo: Marco Langbroek, Leiden, the Netherlands)
^McDowell, Jonathan. "Launch Log". Jonathan's Space Page. Retrieved 21 January 2014.
^ abcdePeat, Chris (10 January 2015). "USA 207 – Orbit". Heavens-Above. Retrieved 25 January 2015.
^McDowell, Jonathan (10 September 2009). "Issue 615". Jonathan's Space Report. Jonathan's Space Page. Archived from the original on 15 September 2009. Retrieved 11 September 2009.
^"Highlights"(PDF). Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. Spring 2007. pp. 28 (29 of PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 26 June 2011. Retrieved 6 September 2009.
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
