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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
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.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @11:52AM (4 children)
Pretty sure this is a message to Iran and reminder that we're watching. Or we can all launch orangemanbad.exe and bitch about Drumpf not knowing what he's doing. Yeah let's take the CNN route.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @12:45PM
Yeah, you're right. I'm pretty sure the Iranians had no idea there were spy satellites looking at them before this. Has nothing to do with the idiot not knowing what he's doing (just ask the Israelis what happens when that idiot wants to look smart in front of adversaries (though, in that case, one can argue he doesn't consider them an adversary)).
(Score: 1, Funny) by catholocism on Thursday September 05 2019, @01:10PM
Wait, people reading this site use windows? Like not in a sandboxed vm? And have cable television? What is this 1998?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @03:03PM
Pretty sure Trump didn't have to release the imagery itself to inform them of that. He could have referenced the commercial reports and said, "Yep. We saw it too, just a little more clearly," which would have said the same thing. Pretty sure the commercial reports about the the incident came out before Trump's tweet and anybody really serving the national interest should have told Trump he didn't need to release the image itself - the world has already seen it in lower resolution. Pretty sure a smarter President could have asked for the image to be pixellated further for public release. Pretty sure that the rest of the world didn't need to know the resolution capability but just live with the illusions of 'license plates from orbit'. Might just be possible we have something more advanced in orbit now, but that doesn't mean that releasing what our capabilities have been was smart. And pretty sure that if NRO had no problem with that they wouldn't have just deflected and said, "See the White House about that...."
Maybe it really is that Trump doesn't know what he's doing, and that you can live in the happy illusion that those who criticize Trump don't really understand him better than you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @03:23PM
Releasing the photograph reveals information about our spy satellites. But you're right, it's not a super serious impeachable treasonous action like running your own email server. Like bush, cheney, and powell did in 2005.