Much information about military space activity comes from governments with their own interests. Fortunately part of it can be checked:
- Orbital data: approaches between satellites can often be recalculated with public catalogues and independent trackers (companies and amateur observers).
- Debris: after a suspected ASAT test, new objects appear in the catalogues — a hard indicator.
- Manoeuvres: a satellite that changes its orbit to get close to another leaves traces in successive orbital data.
- What cannot be checked: intent (inspection or weapon?), the performance of lasers and EW, nuclear plans. Report those as claims, with the source.
A first check can be done with public tools: the manoeuvre tracker and the re-entry tracker of Orbital Radar, and the N2YO satellite database to look up an object by its catalogue number (see 10.6).