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tl/dr: U.S. Military spy satellite camera calibration.
by SCHiM 10y ago
tl/dr: U.S. Military spy satellite camera calibration.
- wyldfire 10y agoYes, indeed but read it anyways! ;) It's not too long IMO and the human element of the story is lost in this summary.
- dsjoerg 10y agoToo long for me! Just here to waste a minute and the TLDR does me a service.
- Animats 10y agoRight. Since each "mysterious" X was equipped with a "US Army Corps of Engineers" brass plate, it was kind of obvious they were calibration targets for something military. The article says "focusing", but they were probably used to get more precise orbital elements for satellites. This was pre-GPS, and calibration across geography on a planetary scale was tough.
- astrodust 10y agoLeft open to rampant speculation it could be test targets for bombing.
- planteen 10y ago> The article says "focusing", but they were probably used to get more precise orbital elements for satellites. This was pre-GPS, and calibration across geography on a planetary scale was tough. My guess is that they served a function for calibrating ground control points rather than orbital elements. Even today, NORAD publishes orbital elements (TLEs) for spacecraft deduced by radar (and also optical means). I think other radio ranging techniques were also used before GPS. Trying to point at Earth-fixed point with only an inertial attitude (without a position/velocity) seems really tough. Today, lots of CubeSats don't have GPS, so they eagerly await getting TLEs from NORAD. It seems like this Twitter is always the first with new data: https://twitter.com/TSKelso https://twitter.com/TSKelso
- dukoid 10y agoDid anybody find one on Google Maps in Satellite mode?
- tugs 10y agoI found two: 32.807001, -111.722184 and 32.791790, -111.705250 I'd like to find more to see the 'grid' mentioned in the article.
- brianwawok 10y agoHah the first one is next door to a gun range.
- sago 10y ago32.807147, -111.688916
- sago 10y agohttps://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1IudNrZA1xnpWjKlscWlSakQHDKo https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1IudNrZA1xnpWjK...
- snovv_crash 10y agoThe description there implies that the other crosses no longer remain, but I was able to find the first 3 I looked for just by looking for midpoints between other markers on the grid.
- sago 10y agoYes, it definitely doesn't have them all. I've found more too. Perhaps the map maker got bored.
- ZeKK14 10y agoI added a few more : https://drive.google.com/open?id=15z8VmPCAGRXwaQ9yxkAGfr2cugo&usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/open?id=15z8VmPCAGRXwaQ9yxkAGfr2cug...
- djsumdog 10y ago> "This [X] we're standing on right now helped protect us from nuclear war," Owen says. Um no. It just helped the US know where shit is. They didn't keep us safe. Mutually assured destruction did. That's why every war since then has been a proxy war. If anything, programs like this poured massive amounts of money into expanding out out of control military and probably caused the expansion of wars into areas, leading to the deaths of countless civilians in the former USSR nations.
- fizzbatter 10y agoI mean, isn't that a bit pedantic? If you go down that route, MAD didn't keep us safe either, it's our enemies belief/knowledge that we had weapons of mass destruction, that kept us safe. etcetcetc It's all part of it. Without intelligence (from dozens of source) to act upon, and Americas enemies believing we could find meaningful targets and/or hit them, MAD wouldn't really exist. Same goes for not having the tech to launch the nukes. Or a hundred other things. It all helped, to one degree or another, and that is all they said. "This [X] we're standing on right now helped protect us from nuclear war". Am i missing your point?