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From the article: "The first photo Arthur Lundahl and I saw from this project was of New York City. The aircraft was seventy-two miles away, and yet we could se
by danboarder 6y ago
From the article: "The first photo Arthur Lundahl and I saw from this project was of New York City. The aircraft was seventy-two miles away, and yet we could see people in Central Park."
This was a camera with lenses designed in 1947. Is the current tech state of the art available? My understanding is that the close up aerial imagery on Google Maps is patched together from much lower flying aerial photos. But these CIA cameras from the 40s sound superior to what we have on Google Maps today (seeing people in central park from 72 miles away, for example).
- sdenton4 6y agoIt's a 240 inch lens in a device weighing 6000 pounds. Seeme like there's some trade-offs involved! Also, it's a film camera, and sounds like it had problems with image smearing in actual use in flight. My guess is that it's a very very good lens (which mainly comes down to elbow grease) paired with tech that's otherwise completely obsolete today.
- femto 6y agoCurrent technology: [1,2]. There is an interesting note in [3], about how one of these satellites is being stalked by a Russian satellite, which is trying to learn more about the US satellite. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#GEOINT_imaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-245 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-245 ---- Edit: Wikipedia has an image from one of the above https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-224#/media/File:2019-08-29_Safir_launch_failure.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-224#/media/File:2019-08-29... Estimated resolution is 10cm or better (the 10cm/pixel image is a photo of a printout, not the original). Distance is estimated to be 382km.