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Amateur satellite spy trackers claim to have identified the source of the photo tweeted last week by President Trump on an Iranian rocket site that has been blown up.
USA-224, a powerful spy satellite launched by the Pentagon's National Reconnaissance Office in 2011, probably broke this picture.
The satellite's capabilities are considered a closely guarded state secret. That's why Trump's tweet raised national security experts who said he may have given too much information to US opponents.
Astronomers such as Marco Langbroek, Cees Bassa and Michael Thompson, a Purdue graduate student, were able to use the photo tweeted by Trump to obtain essential information, according to the national public radio.
President Trump on Friday posted a photo of the launch site of an Iranian rocket following an explosion in that country.
The images of the aftermath of the accident were taken by commercial satellites, but the photo tweeted by Trump was remarkable because of its extremely high resolution.
Amateur astronomers reported using Trump's photo tweeted to collect data that led them to conclude that the photo was probably taken by USA-224, a high-powered spy-satellite. We see it above before launching at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in 2011
Trump, on Friday, tweeted a photo showing the aftermath of an accident that allegedly took place during preparations for the launch of a Safir rocket at Imam Khomeini's spacecraft port in Semnan, Iran.
Iran was apparently preparing to send the Safir, which was equipped with a satellite, into space.
But experts say the rocket exploded during refueling.
The images of the aftermath of the accident were taken by commercial satellites, but the photo tweeted by Trump was remarkable because of its extremely high resolution.
Langbroek states that it was able to determine the approximate time at which the photo was taken by observing the obliquity of the circular launch pad.
On the basis of this information, Langbroek and others concluded that the image was probably taken by USA-224.
They were also able to estimate the approximate duration of the shooting by noticing the shadows projected by the towers on the site.
They could then approximate when the picture was taken looking for which satellite was hovering over the area at that time.
The experts understood that the trajectory of the USA-224 allowed to take the picture at the calculated hour.
USA-224 is a reconnaissance satellite manufactured by Lockheed Martin.
"It's basically a very large telescope, similar to the Hubble Space Telescope," explains Langbroek.
"But instead of looking at the stars, he looks at the surface of the Earth and produces very detailed images."
Dr. Marco Langbroek, a Dutch astronomer, was able to determine the relative position of the satellite relative to the Iranian rocket launch site. His data showed that the satellite was above the Iranian space center around the time the photo was taken.
Thompson says that any amateur astronomer with a telescope in his yard can look at the sky and see satellites.
"They are very bright in the sky and easy to find," he says.
Once a satellite is spotted in the sky, it's simple to follow its future trajectory.
"Using mathematics to calculate an orbit is really easy," he says.
Thompson discovered that the US-224 had flown over the Iranian Space Center right after the accident.
Thompson and Langbroek both calculated that the satellite had flown over the area at approximately 14:14 local time.
Experts say that the high resolution of the image testifies to the power of the satellite telescope.
It is difficult to photograph the Earth from orbit because the atmosphere and constant movement of the satellite would make any image blurry.
After Trump tweeted the photo, experts believe that other countries will try to get more information about the USA-224.
"I imagine that the adversaries will look at this image and reverse engineer it to understand how the sensor works and the post-production techniques they use," says Melissa Hanham, satellite imaging expert at the Network. open nuclear power plant in Vienna, Austria.
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