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Giant Chinese Desert Mystery Structure Solved

Posted by samzenpus on from the that-settles-that dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Slashdotters read Monday about strange symbols in the Gobi Desert recently imaged and indexed by Google Maps. Alien landing zones? Some military thingy? Bizarre art project? Nope. The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets, according to one NASA scientist."

7 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Bombs.. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Doesn't explain why some of the structures have heavy bomb damage.

    Assuming no foreign power has been bombing China- I can't fathom why China would bomb their own calibration units.

    (unless it was to test what would happen- before an enemy did it to them)

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re:Bombs.. by Patch86 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A big chunk of the US war machine is GPS driven, and if you have a capability to operate without GPS and still hit your targets then you have an advantage.

      That's a big "if". Much of the US military uses GPS, but is capable of falling back to more traditional methods. The Chinese military is likely to be just as reliant on GPS, and just as able to utilise fall backs.

      The advantage of destroying GPS would probably be relatively minimal, but the disruption it'd cause to civilian operation (including in China) would be huge.

  2. Why Needed? by wisnoskij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And why would these be needed. There are already many structures easily visible form space and static, so why not just use one of those?

    --
    Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    1. Re:Why Needed? by demonbug · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And why would these be needed. There are already many structures easily visible form space and static, so why not just use one of those?

      Lots of reasons for purpose-built ones. You know exact dimensions, they can be made any size/shape/color/material necessary to test the specifics of your imaging system, and they are presumably placed in the desert because there is rarely cloud cover - so good availability. Trying to use various existing objects/places presents all sorts of additional variables that they may wish to avoid.

  3. Re:spy satellite calibration targets by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If anything to me the interesting part is how much more poor the resolution on the Chinese sats are to the Americans since the Chinese targets are fricking huge and the bullseyes they have in AZ go down to some pretty tiny center targets. I'm sure in another decade though they'll have it tight enough they'll be able to read the license on a car, they'll just need a GUI in VB like the CSI guys.

    The actual resolution of a spy satellite is classified. The use of smaller and smaller targets gives away the resolution of the satellite you're using it with. The fact that the targets have been getting smaller and smaller (and it's measurable) just means that they can ballpark the resolution easier.

    The Chinese "huge targets" doesn't reveal a thing about the quality of their optics. It could be (as assumed) extremely bad. Or it could be extremely good and they're now focusing on parts of the design. Hell, the other test targets around the world are known - the Chinese could simply be targeting using those targets as well, and using these to throw everyone off.

    Part of the role of a good spy is providing disinformation, after all.

  4. Re:spy satellite calibration targets by rioki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Makes complete sense to me. You want a pattern that exists nowhere else on earth, so when your satellite sees the pattern it knows exactly where it is. Then you give it a different pattern, say for example the pattern a ICBM missile silo looks like from space and the satellite will tell you where they are all located.

  5. Re:spy satellite calibration targets by jmac_the_man · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If anything to me the interesting part is how much more poor the resolution on the Chinese sats are to the Americans since the Chinese targets are fricking huge and the bullseyes they have in AZ go down to some pretty tiny center targets. I'm sure in another decade though they'll have it tight enough they'll be able to read the license on a car, they'll just need a GUI in VB like the CSI guys.

    Confirmation bias. The targets you see are only the ones big enough to be seen clearly on Google Maps. If we (or the Chinese or the Russains or whoever) had a spy satellite that could read the year off a quarter, the quarter would just be placed in the correct place and they'd take pictures of it. The fact that you can't see the quarter on Google Maps because GOOGLE doesn't have that kind of resolution doesn't mean nobody does.