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posted by martyb on Thursday September 05 2019, @04:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the security-is-NOT-revealing-capabilities-of-secret-spy-sats dept.

We had two Soylentils write in about President Trump's posting on twitter an image of a failed Iranian attempt to launch a satellite. Analysts were stunned at the resolution and clarity of the picture since it appears to have been taken from a US Spy satellite. A commercial-quality image of the same site is shown in the article from Ars Technica and the difference is striking.

President Trump Tweets Picture of Sensitive Satellite Photo of Iranian Launch Site

President Trump tweets picture of sensitive satellite photo of Iranian launch site

President Donald Trump posted a photo today via Twitter of Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center in northern Iran, showing the damage done to the facility by the explosion of what appears to have been a Safir rocket during launch. The rocket was apparently being used in the attempted launch of Iran's Nahid-1 satellite.

Commercial satellite imagery from Planet Labs made available this morning showed a plume of smoke rising from the space center's launch pad. But the photo posted by President Trump was a much higher-resolution, black and white photo—a resolution that suggested it came from a National Reconnaissance Office satellite.

The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One. pic.twitter.com/z0iDj2L0Y3

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2019

Amateurs Identify U.S. Spy Satellite Behind President Trump's Tweet

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/02/756673481/amateurs-identify-u-s-spy-satellite-behind-president-trumps-tweet

The image almost certainly came from a satellite known as USA 224, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite-tracker based in the Netherlands. The satellite was launched by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2011. Almost everything about it remains highly classified, but Langbroek says that based on its size and orbit, most observers believe USA 224 is one of America's multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance satellites.

[...] The image tweeted by Trump on Friday, showing the aftermath of an accident at Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center, was so detailed that some experts doubted whether it really could have come from a satellite high above the planet.

[...] a small community of amateur satellite trackers was far more interested in the picture than the words. These individuals use backyard telescopes to watch satellites whizzing across the sky, and they know where most of them are — even classified ones like USA 224. "They're super bright in the sky and are easy to find," says Michael Thompson, a graduate student in astrodynamics at Purdue University who spots satellites in his spare time. Once a satellite is seen, it's relatively easy to work out exactly where it will be at any point in the future. "Using math to calculate an orbit is really easy," he says.

Thompson was one of the first to use an amateur-curated database of known satellites to point the finger at USA 224. He showed that it flew over the Iranian space center shortly after the accident.

Langbroek went further still. He was able to reconstruct the picture taken by USA 224 by matching the obliqueness of the circular launch pad in the image tweeted by Trump. His calculation showed that the photo was taken from the vantage of USA 224. Langbroek and another online researcher, Christiaan Triebert, also used shadows cast by towers around the launch pad as sun dials—allowing them to verify the time at which the photo was taken.

Both techniques suggest the pictures were snapped by USA 224, which flew near the site at 2:14 p.m. local time. "The match was perfect, basically," Langbroek says.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @05:50AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @05:50AM (#889891)

    Obviously, without rebuttal, if someone has released, publically, information that compromises the defensive stance of the nation, they should at the bare minimum suffer the withdrawal of their security clearance, as happened with the Runaway1956, and explains why he has no more intelligence. But the idea that the United States would remove the security clearance of the Commander in Chief? But on the other hand, he really doesn't understand the Intelligence Briefings, anyway, so we could just gaslight the president? Turnabout is fair play. Republicans are dead. After this presidency, there will be no Republican party. And if there is, they will not get security clearance. Collusion? Agent of Foreign influence? Ivanka in Columbia! Promoting a new TRUMP line of cocaine! Fantastic.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @05:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @05:53AM (#889893)

    lol, so aristarchus has given up as well and moved on to trolling the idiots #approved

  • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday September 05 2019, @07:07AM

    by coolgopher (1157) on Thursday September 05 2019, @07:07AM (#889905)

    Our Trump, is that you?