8 ms·
What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
- iamshs 7y agoThat image is absolutely bonkers, the more I look at it, the more I admire the satellite's creators. Also, the analysis around the image is fantastic. The data and methods that they used to calculate the height of the satellite, timing of picture etc. it is a treat to see for someone sitting and seeing this unfold on the sides. I remembered this article [1], of Indian Anti-Satellite Test, India claimed satellite was hit on downwards trajectory, and then released the footage with no telemetry redactions. Analysis of that footage showed that missile hit the satellite on the way up and not downwards. Same with North Korean Missile launches, any time any imagery is released or test happens, so many insights come in. OSINT community is seriously amazing. I hope more such 'leaks' occur. [1] - https://thediplomat.com/2019/05/why-indias-asat-test-was-reckless/ https://thediplomat.com/2019/05/why-indias-asat-test-was-rec...
- velox_io 7y agoThat picture is bounced off a 2.4m mirror from nearly 400km away, calling it flawless would be an understatement! The image has also been heavily compressed (after it was annotated), so we're looking at a very poor version of it. So yeah, bonkers is probably the best term to describe it.
- runlevel1 7y agoHow it was tracked back to USA 224: https://github.com/cbassa/satellite_analysis/blob/master/nahid1_launch_failure_analysis.ipynb https://github.com/cbassa/satellite_analysis/blob/master/nah...
- makomk 7y agoThe really astounding part of all this is that hobbyists have been monitoring the exact orbits of all the US spy satellites for years. They know exactly where they're overhead and when. That kind of capability used to be something that only a handful of states had, and now people just do it from their homes and post it to the internet.
- nexuist 7y ago"Who watches the watchers?" Civilian space nerds!
- smudgymcscmudge 7y ago“but who watched them?” CIA, and we’ve gone full circle.
- text_exch 7y agohttps://xkcd.com/1910/ https://xkcd.com/1910/
- yread 7y agoIndians used this knowledge to hide their first nuclear test at Pokhran from US spy satellites https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/society-the-arts/books/story/19990517-book-extract-from-the-book-weapons-of-peace-780871-1999-05-17 https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/society-the-arts/books/st...
- quotz 7y agoOh wow this is the coolest thing I’ve read in a while
- jcims 7y agoFor a bit more corroboration of that analysis, this is what SunCalc says the sun direction would be at that time (9:44:20 UTC, 14:14:20 PM local time) pinned at the base of what (i believe) is that specific launch pad. Elevation of the satellite will affect the apparent angle some, but this is pretty convincing: https://imgur.com/bSDLBmI https://imgur.com/bSDLBmI
- hirundo 7y agoThe good news is that there is a redacted area in the image, so Trump probably didn't just snap and post ... evidence of some limit to the impulsiveness of the commander in chief.
- pcbro141 7y agoThe black box on the top left? I'm assuming that's just redacting the classification level, which was surely Top Secret.
- asmithmd1 7y agoThe interesting thing about the black box is that it is square to the frame of the image and slightly skew to the text boxes in the original intelligence product. This indicates the image posted is not simply a camera phone snap posted directly to Twitter, the image was edited before it was posted
- antonioevans 7y ago...are you assuming that there isn't someone at Twitter who monitors Presidential Posts before they go out. I assume there must be.
- justforyou 7y agoTwitter can't keep it's CEO's account secure, and does not review his posts. I doubt they do anything special for the POTUS aside from exempting his account from the platform's rules.
- mistermann 7y agoWhich rules is he exempt from?
- judge2020 7y ago
- pcunite 7y agoI hold the understanding that its possible to view a license plate from space. I suggest you keep to that view in mind as well.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 7y agoViewing a license place it not the same as reading it.
- rocky1138 7y agoYes, but if there is video instead of a still frame, it may be possible to put together what the characters on the plate are.
- jacquesm 7y agoNot with that resolution (7cm / pixel).
- mrob 7y agoWe know what can be written on license plates, and we know that license plates don't change over short times, so it's possible to determine which characters best match the sequence of frames even if no individual frame is readable. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_imaging
- vinaypai 7y agoThe resolution of this satellite is about 5-7 cm per pixel which is about the limit of what's possible with the 2.4m mirror it uses. You'd need a mirror at least 10x as large to read license plates, and that's if they were pointing upward.
- 7y ago
- enriquto 7y agoany link to the tweet itself? I cannot watch the video
- t0mas88 7y agoThe tweet itself is Trump twittering a picture of the launch site on a rocket in Iran.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoI believe this is the tweet from Trump: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1167493371973255170?s=20 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11674933719732551...
- api 7y agoWhat Trump leaked about billion dollar spy satellites...
- inetsee 7y agoTwo things I got from the video: 1) The videos of the launches are scary, especially the launches with the "A" rockets, and the fireball surrounding the rocket at the beginning of the launch. 2) It's a shame the patch with the Klingon text never made it out into the wild.
- jobigoud 7y agoWhat I got from the video is that we have hundreds of Hubbles around the Earth but only one of them is pointed outwards at the stars.
- garmaine 7y agoYeah. A couple of years ago the NRO discovered they had a couple more sitting in a warehouse they forgot about, and gifted them to NASA. Sadly they still haven’t been launched due to NASA nonsense. But still.. the intelligence agencies had two extra Hubble’s they didn’t know what to do with.
- rasz 7y agoAnd one of the conspiracy theories is it only happened to camouflage their true potential by gifting the defective one.
- Dylan16807 7y agoI'm not sure how you got 'hundreds'. He named five satellites with this level of quality or greater. The hundreds of tiny cubesats have about 30x less resolution, squared.
- fareesh 7y agoFrom what I understand, it was already well known that the USA could take satellite photos of things, except not at the level of quality/detail as the one shown in this image. Is that a distinction without a difference? I suppose in theory now that this information is out there regarding capabilities, you know this for sure, but would you have guessed the capability is not there if you were making a decision that factored it in? My guess is you would assume that this capability exists. If I wanted to be really good, I would assume 10x this capability exists.
- Zigurd 7y agoBig difference between inferring and confirming and knowing
- gruez 7y ago>My guess is you would assume that this capability exists. >If I wanted to be really good, I would assume 10x this capability exists. The video says that the quality was already at the limit that 2.4m mirrors can achieve. The fact that the spy satellites had 2.4m mirrors was already known (from hubble design documents). So basically if you were the baddies and were preparing for the worst case scenario (as you should), you were covered. If you got lazy and didn't, it was a wake-up call.
- jmull 7y agoI'm more worried about what it tells us about the moron running our country. Jesus Christ, we are all screwed.
- minitoar 7y agoScott Manley has a lot of great content. He also does Let’s Play of Kerbal Space Program which is how I initially came to know of him. His videos on rocketry and Space Stuff are basically how I keep up to date.
- anonymousiam 7y agoNothing our enemies did not already know.
- DJBunnies 7y agoAnd what of our citizens?
- Phlarp 7y agoChina and Russia sure, Israel perhaps. Turkey? Probably? Pakistan maybe? What about Libya, Iran, or North Korea? Everybody knows the specifics now, and even the less well funded adversarial agencies will have a much firmer idea of just how good the adaptive optics of KH-11 are.
- assblaster 7y agoIt doesn't matter, the level of detail is so good that no camouflage can hide your secrets. This tweet says: we can see anything we want to see. We know when you're lying, don't even try.