Amateur satellite trackers say they believe an image tweeted by President Trump on Friday came from one of America's most advanced spy satellites.
The image almost certainly came from a satellite known as USA 224, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite-tracker based in the Netherlands. The satellite was launched by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2011. Almost everything about it remains highly classified, but Langbroek says that based on its size and orbit, most observers believe USA 224 is one of America's multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance satellites.
"It's basically a very large telescope, not unlike the Hubble Space Telescope," Langbroek says. "But instead of looking up to the stars, it looks down to the earth's surface and makes very detailed images."
The image tweeted by Trump on Friday, showing the aftermath of an accident at Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center, was so detailed that some experts doubted whether it really could have come from a satellite high above the planet.
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The image almost certainly came from a satellite known as USA 224, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite-tracker based in the Netherlands. The satellite was launched by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2011. Almost everything about it remains highly classified, but Langbroek says that based on its size and orbit, most observers believe USA 224 is one of America's multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance satellites.
"It's basically a very large telescope, not unlike the Hubble Space Telescope," Langbroek says. "But instead of looking up to the stars, it looks down to the earth's surface and makes very detailed images."
The image tweeted by Trump on Friday, showing the aftermath of an accident at Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center, was so detailed that some experts doubted whether it really could have come from a satellite high above the planet.
Link