any link to the tweet itself? I cannot watch the video
What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
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Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The interesting thing about the black box is that it is square to the frame of the image and slightly skew to the text boxes in the original intelligence product. This indicates the image posted is not simply a camera phone snap posted directly to Twitter, the image was edited before it was posted
...are you assuming that there isn't someone at Twitter who monitors Presidential Posts before they go out. I assume there must be.
Twitter can't keep it's CEO's account secure, and does not review his posts.
I doubt they do anything special for the POTUS aside from exempting his account from the platform's rules.
Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#13I hold the understanding that its possible to view a license plate from space. I suggest you keep to that view in mind as well.
Viewing a license place it not the same as reading it.
Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#14I hold the understanding that its possible to view a license plate from space. I suggest you keep to that view in mind as well.
The resolution of this satellite is about 5-7 cm per pixel which is about the limit of what's possible with the 2.4m mirror it uses. You'd need a mirror at least 10x as large to read license plates, and that's if they were pointing upward.
Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#15I hold the understanding that its possible to view a license plate from space. I suggest you keep to that view in mind as well.
Viewing a license place it not the same as reading it.
Yes, but if there is video instead of a still frame, it may be possible to put together what the characters on the plate are.
Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#16I hold the understanding that its possible to view a license plate from space. I suggest you keep to that view in mind as well.
I'm of the understanding that this was not a single image, but a composite image, taking by different satellites, planes, and/or drones.
The US could have build test facilities in their deserts, have a 3-D model available for proper reconstruction, and then learn to stitch and skew back all imagery into a single composite image. There may even be some "filling in" or "sharpening" of pixels or textures that could not be observed, but are guessed from their context.
In the framework of composite imagery, it would indeed be possible to zoom in, until you get to camera's capturing road traffic (maybe the license plate was not observed in the moment the main photo was taken, but was remembered from an observation by traffic camera 30 minutes ago and stitched back onto the object: composite imagery through time).
Finally, you could use multiple non-image sources for the composition. If three (ground) sensors capture the noise, heat, or vibrations from a train on a train track, you can now triangulate and draw the location of that train on space photos at a timestamp of your choosing.
Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#17any link to the tweet itself? I cannot watch the video
The tweet itself is Trump twittering a picture of the launch site on a rocket in Iran.
Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#18Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#19I hold the understanding that its possible to view a license plate from space. I suggest you keep to that view in mind as well.
This is anecdotal, and no idea how real it is, but my dad flew reconnaissance for the USAF in the 70s and claimed to have the capability to read license plates way back then from very high altitude (no idea what qualified as very high altitude, but assumed they were not easily detected from the ground).
Re: What a tweet tells us about spy satellites [video]
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The interesting thing about the black box is that it is square to the frame of the image and slightly skew to the text boxes in the original intelligence product. This indicates the image posted is not simply a camera phone snap posted directly to Twitter, the image was edited before it was posted
...are you assuming that there isn't someone at Twitter who monitors Presidential Posts before they go out. I assume there must be.
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