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Cold War Satellite Pics Declassified

Posted by michael on from the magnifying-glass-required dept.

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?"

18 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Whose looking in your window? by Havoc'ing · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you figure we can view a galaxy a bizzillion miles away through the hubble just imagine what we are capable of now right in our back yard. And the hubble aint even classified.

    1. Re:Whose looking in your window? by phil+reed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      just imagine what we are capable of now right in our back yard.

      Not as much as you might imagine. A Hubble-sized telescope in orbit at Hubble's altitude, pointed straight down, can resolve down to 15 centimeters. That would be enough to tell that you drive a Honda instead of a Surburban, but it couldn't tell much beyond that.

      --

      ...phil
      "For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
    2. Re:Whose looking in your window? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Makes me wonder why we need guys driving around Iraq in little white jeeps.

    3. Re:Whose looking in your window? by Honorbound · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Indeed. Given that we can get one-meter or better spatial resolution panchromatic data from commercial sources now (http://www.digitalglobe.com/index.shtml and http://www.spaceimaging.com), one wonders what the government is up to. Now, when the multispectral resolution gets to below one-meter we'll have reason to be really excited.

      --
      "I'm not, like, that smart. I, like, forget stuff all the time." -- Paris Hilton
    4. Re:Whose looking in your window? by ottffssent · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Or more than you might imagine. 1m resolution is fine enough to see the lines in parking lots and count full v. empty spaces and see opened doors (not sliding van doors). What do you think something 7 times as good will show? Make and model of car, all doors, how many people, whether and what they are carrying, and if they wear glasses. You can probably tell the make of shoe someone is wearing at that resolution.

      And that's just from one frame. With multiple frames, you increase dramatically the information you have available, and you can interpolate down much finer than the camera resolution.

      --
      High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
    5. Re:Whose looking in your window? by Buran · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One of the later Keyhole satellites -- 11 or 12, I'm not sure which and I haven't had the time to look into it since deciding to last week -- actually is based on the Hubble design. However, the optics are not the same -- they cannot be.

      As others have said already, the primary mirror is not of the right design to look back at the Earth and actually yield the right kind of details. Hubble focuses to infinity and an earth-imaging satellite only has to focus to a distance of a few hundred miles -- the exact altitude depends on the satellite's orbit.

      Furthermore, Hubble's optics are too sensitive to be pointed at the Earth or the Moon -- both are so bright that they'd blow out the sensors.

      However, it is entirely possible for such a satellite to be launched by the Shuttle -- the size of the payload bay, don't forget, was set by a DoD request ("you set it up like this or we don't pay you to help develop it") and there were a bunch of DoD flights back in the 1980s and early 1990s. And Hubble is just about perfectly sized to fit in the bay -- it's the largest payload, physically, ever launched, I think.

      So it'd make sense that the civilian version of the KH-1x satellite in question exactly fits -- because that's the payload the shuttle was designed for. (A set payload bay size then leads to the overall size of the orbiter, which leads to the wing design, which leads to the requirements for engines, fuel, boosters, etc...)

      It also means that, since the Soviets copied the US shuttle design for Buran, ALL reusable space planes that have ever flown were designed to carry this mystery DoD payload! Even the one that's not ours! (I don't say "manned" because Buran carried no crew during its only flight.)

      --
      i am a soviet space shuttle
    6. Re:Whose looking in your window? by mesocyclone · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Problems with this analysis:

      1) Id doesn't take into account any electronic processing of resulting signals or using multiple images taken seconds apart to achieve higher resolution.

      2) Optical spy satellites are likely to use multiple mirrors, both to use adaptive optics to adjust for atmospheric turbulence, and to avoid the problem of fit in the shuttle payload.

      I believe it is the Keck telescope (which has adaptive optics) that has resolution sufficient to read a license plate from much higher orbits (all other caveats apply).

      A little tidbit... the Multiple-Mirror Telescope (MMT) on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona used to be (and may still be) owned by the airport. When it was built, it was built with an azimuth/elevation mount, rather than the usual polar mount, and used a computer steering system that was accurate enough to account for minute flexing in the very rigid metal frame.

      The mirrors were Air-Force surplus from the spy satellite program.

      The Air-Force used to "borrow" the scope from time to time. The Az-El mount was probably chosen to allow tracking of earth orbiting objects - Russian satellites.

      The spook folks work with very impressive technology. They are bound by the laws of physics, but they probably have engineering tricks that the public world has not heard of. Tricks in signal processing, adaptive optics in space, ultra-precision pointing, etc.

      Actually, if you just solve the problem of taking current earth borne adaptive optics telescopes into orbit, you can pretty well achieve the resolution you want.

      And then, of course, there is synthetic aperture radar. Synthetic aperture is a mathematical technique for creating a synthetic (virtual) antenna of very long length (very high resolution in one dimension) along the motion of the radar. Simple radar has, of course, much lower resolution than optics for the same size antenna, due to the much longer wavelength. But when you extend the antenna for hundreds or thousands of meters through synthetic aperture magic, that resolution gets very good.

      And then, of course, we can speculate about Lidar. I have no idea what the spooks may do with that.

      I think the problem of resolution is no longer of significance to the spook business. The bigger problems are areal coverage, data reduction and storage, and concealment.

      --

      The only good weather is bad weather.

    7. Re:Whose looking in your window? by EMH_Mark3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If I recall correctly, current military satellites have a resolution of about 10 cm (~4 inches). Compare that to commercial satellite that have resolutions varying between 1 and 10 meters.. (Although one satellite can acheive a 66cm resolution)

      --
      Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
  2. Interesting, somewhat related by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While working at nasa, a co-worker told me this story once:
    Apparently in the 80's, he had been working on a satellite which contained a sensor to measure ground temperatures. The contractors who were working on the image processing for the data were so far behind, that the program would not be ready until a couple months after the satellite launch (a major PR disaster - no pretty pictures for the public to see!). So he was put on a crack team to hack something together that would be ready by launch time. What they ended up putting together was better than the specs. So the satellite launched and they got back the pictures and saw alot of interesting things... Like, gee, what's that underground hot spot in Nevada, and so on and so forth... So they were all pleased with themselves until the Feds came, classified their program and all the images, dumped all their equipment in a truck, and drove off.. I guess this shows why it is never better to do more than "government work" :)

  3. Re:Cuban Pics by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, the intelligence pics that proved the Soviets had missiles in Cuba were taken by U2 spy planes. They were published immediately - if you're trying to force the Russians to remove their missiles, you don't keep it a secret that you know about the missiles. You tell the world.

    In the early sixties, satellite reconaissance was primitive - it was still at the stage of ejecting the film in a little capsule to be picked up on the ground :-) Planes were getting much better material then.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  4. The probable limit of spysats by MtViewGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think the practical limit for today's KH-11 and newer spysats is about 6-7 cm resolution, not enough to read a newspaper headline but definitely good enough to tell what kind of vehicle you're looking at.

    Remember, even at 100 cm resolution the IKONOS satellite is capable of showing some amazing images. Remember that IKONOS image of the North Korean rocket test facility?

    I expect within the next 4-5 years several companies will be orbiting imaging satellites capable of resolution at 100 cm resolution. It'll be nearly impossible to hid any secret activity with that type of resolution.

  5. KH-9, Big Bird by wiredog · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It was the last of the bucket droppers. An interesting book, if you can find it, is Deep Black. It's a history of overhead imaging from the Civil War through the KH-11 program, including the U-2 and SR-71 aircraft.

    My father worked for the Defense Mapping Agency (the predecessor of NIMA) until 89 and he was surprised at some of the things that showed up in that book. Especially that the resolution of the KH-11 (best is 2.5 inches, so it can't read license plates) and KH-9 (9 inches) were in there.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
  6. Insteresting Little Story by FatRatBastard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used to live on RAF Woodbridge in the UK back in the 80s (go Warriors!) and was there during the infamous Rendlesham forest UFO sighting (of Unsolved Mysteries and East at Left Gate fame). One of the better theories I've read about the whole thing was that the UFO story was a cover story for retrieving low flying spy satellite film canister, which, frankly, makes a hell of a lot more sense than the UFO nutters who are convinced we were doing all sorts of who knows what with ET.

  7. No Chernobyl pics, probably by Charles+Dodgeson · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I doubt we'll see Chernobyl pics; they're too recent for one thing. But it would be fun. Anyone remember the early days of it when the US was reporting the event based, so they said, on spy sat pics, and non-communist central and northern Europe was reporting contamination in their air. But the line from the USSR was, "No, we don't have any problem. No we don't need your help. BTW, anyone know how to put out a graphite fire?"

    In the eastern block, news of the event was only reported about a week afterwards. A joke going around Hungary (which borders the Ukraine) was, Q: Why do we celebrate the October Revolution in November? A: Because that is when TASS felt fit to report it.

    --
    Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
  8. Unbelievable technology by HisMother · · Score: 4, Interesting


    I've read articles about the technology behind these -- it's pretty amazing. The pictures were not "beamed" back to earth -- they were taken on film and the film parachuted back.

    --
    Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
  9. The ones that are still classified by smaugy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wouldn't it be possible to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle to find out which ones weren't declassified?

  10. Common misinformation on HST by StupendousMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The parent is wrong about several things:

    As others have said already, the primary mirror is not of the right design to look back at the Earth and actually yield the right kind of details. Hubble focuses to infinity and an earth-imaging satellite only has to focus to a distance of a few hundred miles -- the exact altitude depends on the satellite's orbit.
    HST's instruments include movable mirrors which allow one to modify the focus. They could easily focus on objects at the distance of the Earth's surface. HST has taken pictures of the Moon, which is certainly not at infinity.

    Furthermore, Hubble's optics are too sensitive to be pointed at the Earth or the Moon -- both are so bright that they'd blow out the sensors.

    Some of HST's instruments would saturate if they took exposures of the Earth through wide filters. Others would not. The HST calibration team sometimes takes exposures of the Earth or Moon to use as flatfields.

    But, yes, as many have already pointed out, HST can't take images resolving newspaper headlines.

    --
    Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
    mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
  11. Russians nuked the Chinese by cilyrabit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Rumor... a friend told me this story a year ago, don't know if its true and didn't find anything about it after a quick search on the internet... but here goes:

    My friend said "

    I had a friend who used to work for the government... years ago he processed the photos that the US spy satellites took. One night at dinner the discussion had wandered onto the topic of the atomic bomb and its potential uses in a modern conflict, and someone says something to the effect:

    "... the US is the only country that has used the atomic bomb against another nation..."

    At which the friend spoke up, "Except for the time when the Russians bombed the Chinese."

    Everyone at the table stopped talking and looked at him. "What!"

    "Oh you guys didn't hear about that did you..."

    A rough outline of the scenario...

    Back in the late 50's or early 60's sometime the Russians and the Chinese are glaring at each other across the Siberian border of which some remote corner's exact boundries are in dispute. Each country lines up some number of troops and tensions are a little high. Finally the Russians move their withdraw their troops back about 10 miles... the next day the Chinese advance 10 miles. A few days later the Russians retreat 25 miles... over the next few days the Chinese advance 25 miles (meanwhile the US spy satellites are catching all of this in photos). A few more days go by and the Russians retreate 50 miles and the Chinese advance once again. So the Russian retreat 100 miles and drop a nuke right above the Chinese! ... From that point on Chinese ceased their dispute over the Siberian border.

    Is this true! How come no one has heard of this story? Supposedly the Russians weren't going to tell because they didn't want to attract international condemnation. Besides, they had used in their own territory. They could claim it to be a test.

    The Chinese? They didn't want to have to answer the question, "What was China doing with troops deep in Soviet Siberia."

    The US? Why were they silent? That is top secret, but maybe some of the declassified photos show the events...