When a tiny satellite leapt into orbit on the morning of April 11, 2005, it signaled the start of a new generation of smarter, lighter, more self-sufficient satellites. Or did it become the latest bullet point in a Pentagon plan to develop a first-strike capability in space? It all depends on whom you ask.

Everyone agrees that the Air Force's $80 million Experimental Small Satellite 11 (XSS-11) will be spending the next year or so circling around dead spacecraft, using its laser rangefinder and star-tracking camera to maneuver autonomously and operate nose-to-nose with other orbiters. The question is: What comes next?

The U.S. military needs something to inspect and repair the satellites that guide its bombs, relay its orders and spy on its enemies. Right now, if one of those orbiters gets in trouble--as a Pentagon missile-warning satellite did back in 1999--"there's nothing we can do about it," says Vernon Baker, the XSS-11's program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Machines like the 305-pound, 9-ft.-long XSS-11 could be the answer. Better microprocessors, smarter avionics and off-the-shelf parts have allowed the XSS-11 to shrink to about one-fifth the size of a typical military satellite, and to get a lot more maneuverable. That could one day enable XSS-11's descendants to blast off in a matter of months, instead of the three to four years it can take to put a satellite mission together now.

But that short preparation time and zero-g agility also could make the microsatellites ideal weapons for disabling other countries' orbiters, note Pentagon space critics, including Theresa Hitchens, vice president of the Center for Defense Information. XSS-11's predecessor was an experimental missile defense satellite called Clementine 2. "That history makes me suspicious," Hitchens says. In the 2004 report titled "Counterspace Operations," the Air Force declared that the "freedom to attack, denying space capability to the adversary" has become a "crucial first step in any military operation." The Defense Department plans to spend about $10 million over four years to develop small satellite payloads that could take out other orbiters.

The Air Force says the XSS-11 itself "is not a weapon and it has no military mission or application." Hitchens agrees that the "current experiments are benign." It's the future potential of the mini sat that has caught her attention. To which Baker replies, "Name me a technology that can't be used for the military somehow."