An image of a failed Iranian launch tweeted by the US President set experts and netizens on their toes, as the high resolution of the photo cannot be achieved with known satellite technology.
In a tweet posted Friday, US President Donald Trump posted a highly-detailed aerial photo of Iran's Semnan Space Center Launch Site One, damaged and charred after an explosion which supposedly happened during the fueling of a rocket.
“The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran. I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One,” Trump tweeted, accompanied by the photo.
However, it was the photo that attracted the attention of viewers, as the launch site is depicted in uncommonly high resolution.
“I've never seen anything like this before,” said David Schmerler, a leading expert on open-source imagery analysis, according to Business Insider. “I know that [the US military has] amazing capabilities, but I don't know what this is.”
Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists who specializes in analyzing satellite images, says the photo could only have been taken by a highly-classified military satellite. According to Panda, no commercial satellite he knows of is capable of such high resolution. The WorldView-2 satellite, produced by Maxar, can only provide a 46-centimeter resolution, a National…
