ONYX Satellites

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Onyx/Lacrosse Satellites

Lacrosse and Onyx are the rumored code names for the United States' National Reconnaissance Office terrestrial radar imaging reconnaissance satellite. While not officially confirmed by the NRO or anybody in the U.S. government, there is widespread evidence to confirm its existence. One example would be the non-classified acknowledgement of NASA's Magellan Venus probe, which has similar capabilities, and was built by the same contractor (Martin Marietta, though currently Lockheed Martin) using what is probably very similar hardware. Lacrosse uses synthetic aperture radar to perform mapping. It also has some ability to penetrate soil, though there have been more powerful instruments deployed in space for this specific purpose. Early versions are believed to have used the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) to relay imagery to a ground station at White Sands, New Mexico. There are some indications that other relay satellites may now be available for use with Lacrosse. The name "Lacrosse" is used to refer to all variants, while "Onyx" is sometimes used to refer to the three newer units.
It has been reported that the B-2 bomber was originally intended to use directly downlinked targeting data from Lacrosse satellites in order to aid it in its role of hunting down and destroying Soviet mobile ICBM launchers. It had been anticipated that the Lacrosse satellites would be replaced by the radar component of the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA). The severe program problems encountered by FIA in the early 2000s appear to have led to off-loading of radar reconnaissance to the Space Based Radar, later simplified to Space Radar, with initial launch anticipated around 2015. [1]

References

[1] Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite)