Cold War Satellite Pics Declassified

wwwssabbsdotcom writes "Looks like 25 years ago, we were taking pretty good B&W pics of the rest of the world, interesting story. How about those Cuban Missile Crisis pics, do they have that roll available?"

Comments

ho hum....

[Anonymous Coward]

*Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 6.0, and Netscape 7.0 uses the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine which does not support the original Java applet security model used with EarthExplorer applets.
**EarthExplorer will not currently work with Macintosh systems due to the following:

1. IE and the Microsoft Virtual Machine does not support LiveConnect for Macintosh systems.
2. Old versions of the Java Virtual Machine (Netscape 4.6 and earlier) do not support LiveConnect for Macintosh systems.
3. The Java 2 Virtual Machine does not support the original Java applet security model EarthExplorer uses.
4. Signed secure applets don't communicate properly through LiveConnect when using the JAVA 2 Virtual Machine on a Macintosh. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160274 for more information.

Macintosh users may search for many of the same products at: http://edc.usgs.gov/webglis. You can also access EarthExplorer using the PC emulation package "Virtual PC" if you have this installed on your system

USGS web page: Gale Norton strikes again!

[mfago]

As mentioned in another post, the USGS webpage itself is unusable unless you're running Netscape 4 (windows or linux only) or IE for Windows.

I think it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to emailthe maintainer of the web page.

Unsurprising for the gov't to so thouroughly screw-up like this, especially with Interior Secretary Gale Norton at the helm. FWIW, she is facing contempt of court charges for lying in Federal court during a trial of gross mismanagement of the Native American Trust fund. Mismanagement by completely failing to secure a computer system...

Hell, why don't we all email Gale herself?!

Re:Whose looking in your window?

[phil reed]

Here's an older DejaView message on the topic. It addresses this very issue.

Undergraduate physics:

Resolving power R (resolution) of a diffraction limited telescope: R = wavelength/(2*diameter telescope)

This means for the HST (2.4 meter) and visual wavelenght (500nm) R = 500nm/4.8m = 1*10^(-7)

Since the Hubble is in orbit h = 680km (380 miles) high, this means it can theoretically resolve: Detail = R * h = 0.07. Thus 7cm (3 inch) details. Not enuff for reading license plates, even if someone would hold it up to the sky so we dont have inclination effects. Besides this, the best visual wavelength camera on board (the PC chip on the WFPC2 camera) UNDERsamples this signal by a factor of 2 giving an effective resolution of 14cm (1/2 feet).

This holds only if we ignore atmospheric turbulence effects (which certainly DONT average out), the pointing instability (up to about 10mas (micro-arcseconds)) and thermal breathing (up to 10mas). This degrades the image even further. (10mas translates to about 5cm as seen from the HST)

Furthermore, target acquisition is problematic. HST uses guide-stars, which need to be in the field of view, to lock on targets. Certainly no stars available on the face of the earth ;-p. Even then: A quote from the HST data hanbook: "It is also possible to take observations (primarily WFPC2 "snapshot" exposures) without guide stars, using only gyro pointing control. The absolute pointing accuracy using gyros is about 14" (one sigma), and the pointing drifts at a rate of 1.4 +/- 0.7 mas s**-1. "

So, we have a 66% chance of 14" (arcseconds) acquisition accuracy. This translates to about 1400 pixels offset (if we were well sampled) on a ccd camera or 100m inaccuracy on the ground.

Say we want a spy satellite with 1cm resolution (ignoring degrading affects) on orbit 300km high (if lower, atmospheric friction would cause it to fall back to the earth), then applying the same formulae as above we would need a telescope diameter of roughly 5 meters. (According the the space shuttle reference guide you would have to keep the payload doors open in flight to make it fit, hehehe)

Conclusion:

IMBO the NSA cant read license plates. The technology for space telescopes with this capability is only now being developed (look for NGST on the web) against HUGE costs, certainly not within the NSA's budget. Besides target acquisition is a severe limitation, and it's role becomes more important when the resolution increases.

just my $0.02

Yup, the film was Kodak film -- no kidding

[Buran]

Actually, the Corona program did use Kodak film. Due to static problems with early film (which caused arcing on the exposed negatives), Kodak developed polymer-based film.

I work in an electron microscopy lab and the film used for the EM systems is Kodak 4489 "ESTAR Thick Base" -- which means that my paychecks depend directly on something that was developed for use in space. (As a space buff -- Buran is/was the Soviet space shuttle -- I'm quite pleased with that situation.) A spinoff, as they're commonly called.

The EM film is mounted on metal plates for exposing and when developed yields 8cmx10cm transparencies using Kodak D-19 developer. For Corona, the exposed film was placed in a reentry capsule which parachuted back to earth and was retrieved midair by a C-119 Flying Boxcar aircraft. It doesn't take that long to develop at all and can be ready for analysis the same day.

According to the Kodak EM film page:

"KODAK Electron Micrography Film 4489 has approximately half the speed of KODAK Electron Image Film SO-163 film, but exhibits less curl and shorter pump-down times. Coated on a 7mils Estar support, KODAK Electron Microscope Film offers exceptional dimensional stability and eliminates the use of traditional glass support products."

We are still using film because (1) electron microscopes are very expensive, so ours are from the mid-1970s, (2) it's not that easy to retrofit them, at least as far as I understand it, for full digital, and (3) it's not all that hard to put the negatives on a lightbox and shoot them with a professional digital SLR, which is how we get the images into computers for processing. And, of course, (4) digital camera technology still hasn't beat out film for quality yet, though we're hoping to get a Canon EOS-1Ds soon that will start to close the quality gap.

(The film is kept in a vacuum once in the microscope -- something else which I'm sure was a benefit for Corona.)

If you want to see some sample EM images taken with the Kodak film, see our lab's image gallery. Don't bother with Kodak's sample images, they suck. ;)

I'm pretty sure that Kodak also designed the Corona camera system, though I'm not certain who the actual builder was.

Panoramic Imagery

[briancnorton]

This is all great and all, but I have worked with corona imagery (after 1996) and it's REALLY hard to use.

First of all, the imagery is not vertical, it's panoramic. Great for intel agencies, not so great for mapping. It's almost impossible to orthographically rectify, and hence use for anything useful. The resolution of the film is very good. It's something like 150 lp/mm, and the stereo is very good, but it's a pain in the butt to do panoramic stereo without special equipment.

second, geo-referencing was accomplished in a brilliant, if arcane way. A second camera was involved that took pictures of the stars 180 away from the image. To find out what the picture is of, you need starcharts and a lot of math to figure out what stars you are looking at, where the satellite was, and what the picture is of. The equipment to do this in a useful environment is VERY expensive.

third, it's panchromatic and not IR sensitive. You can see some ground features, but nothing environmental, and not all that much of historical significance. Consequently, the imagery has not been used for as much as had been hoped.