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NRO Declassifies KH-9 Satellite
schwit1 writes "The Big Bird, formally known as the KH-9 Hexagon satellite, was first placed in orbit in 1971 after its development by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), making it one of the most advanced spy satellites of its time. It is believed to have produced images of the Soviet Union, China and other countries that held strategic importance for the U.S. government through the Cold War. But it was never seen outside the intelligence community. This weekend, it will be available for all in the Washington area to see, but only for one day. To celebrate its 50-year anniversary, the NRO, along with the Smithsonian Institution, is for the first time publicly displaying the newly declassified relic at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va. In doing so, the intelligence agency is prompting more than just a little bit of excitement among reconnaissance experts and technical hobbyists."
It was probably the last one on the production lineup, and got the launch got scrubbed because something better came out, and instead of wasting a Titan launch on something obsolete, they changed plans. TFA didn't say this particular bird was launched in 1971, or at all, just that the first one flew in 1971.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Declassification is partially just time, the government keeps things classified for a large number of years to make it more likely that the information is no longer useful. However they do look and see even for older stuff if it is still sensitive. It is not automatic after a certain period, just possible.
Well for these satellites, the answer is no. Commercial satellites can get about a half meter these days (the GeoEye-1 is the one I know of that can). As such revealing that the US has a sat that could do 6 meters isn't revealing anything sensitive. That there are commercial half-meter satellites means you know the government has imagery at least that good (as they could simply buy one if they lacked better technology of their own).
Usually you build at least two. One will be space qualified and the other sits in a lab. Any changes you make to the flight software are tested on the lab version first to prevent expensive/embarrassing mistakes.
Consumer-grade 35mm film has about 3000 grains per inch average, so each frame has a granularity of about 4000x3000. However, the photochemical process by which grains are exposed and fixed does not happen on a regular grid (like pixels do), and favors clustering of grains especially at edges. There is a nominally (except for texture of the backing medium) infinite degree of subgrain positions exposed grains can get fixed to when developed.
So while a 370NM distance might be covered by 4000 grains, about 171 meters per grain, the shapes defined by grains around features in the subject could possibly represent much finer sizes, perhaps down to several dozen feet.
Another factor is the nature of the subject. If you can tell from a fuzzy zoom simply whether or not a shape is dark or light, you might be able to tell whether a garage door (or missile silo) is open or closed, or empty or full. You might be able to tell that a light is on in an office at night. You might be able to tell that a line of tanks is arrayed, not a chainlink fence. A big part is the human eye and mind's ability to recognize shapes in fuzzy analog blotches, especially from a short list of possible answers. Which is what the majority of intelligence relies on: getting context, not just the target data, and making reasonable inferences.
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make install -not war
That's not necessarily true.
It's true that revealing our capabilities 40 years ago doesn't provide our adversaries with any technical advantage to use against us today. "Film! How quaint!"
But it might reveal things from 40 years ago that do have impact on present-day policy. Somewhere in the KGB/FSB, someone might have made a decision about whether or we knew about $FOO in the 70s because we had a highly-detailed pictures of it from space, because we had a mole onsite working on the $FOO project, or because we just made a lucky guess.
Suppose they believed that we had half-meter resolution on Specific Date, 1971 and ascribed the leak to spy satellites. But today, they know that our 1971 satellites couldn't have compromised $FOO to the degree that they did because they just weren't good enough. Time to dig open those dusty file folders and re-evaluate who had access to $FOO, because if any of those people are working on the brand-new super-secret $BAR project, and after a 40-year career, probably have access to $BAR today than they did to $FOO in the 70s.
Also consider the answer to "Why did country X do something 35 years ago" might be very useful if you knew what we might have been sharing with country X's leaders. The people running country X might still be in power, and the answer to those sorts of questions has diplomatic repercussions today.
Those are just two of the reasons why declassification takes decades.
Anyhow, thanks, grey-haired spy nerds (and grey-haired balls-out crazy pilots!), for showing us some really cool stuff, like trying to catch a parachuting capsule in mid-air, which was something I hadn't heard of until Genesis and Stardust projects. Now we know where the science teams got the idea (and after the crash of Genesis, we also know which direction to install the accelerometer, and the importance of never skipping testing procedures...)