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#12
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The advantage of hand-held views is the oblique angle on the ground target, especially if it has significant vertical dimension (as a hurricane does). The automated imaging systems are usually straight down from directly overhead. |
#13
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That camera and lens is not really good enough for serious recon.
I doubt that anything that they have on board ISS is up to the task... if it were NASA would know about it. "Jim Oberg" wrote in message ... From ISS On-Orbit Status, October 17: "Yuri Shargin used the Nikon D1 camera with f800 lens on his first session of observation and imaging of selected targets for the Russian Environmental Protection Service as part of the Ekon (KPT-3) experiment, today performing photography of the North American continent." Uh, my awkward question is this: what interest does a Russian environmental protection experiment have in high-res surface imaging of North America (read: United States)? Since it's a Russian experiment, I presume this means that NASA will never see the images. Does this activity possibly have anything to do with the recent severe shortage of Russian military reconnaissance capability (nine months without ANY reccesat in orbit, just recently alleviated)? I could be totally over-reacting here -- after all, Anatoliy Perminov, head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, promised that Shargin would not be doing any military-related activities on ISS, and since Perminov was until recently Shargin's boss (he's the former head of the Russian 'Space Forces', and a military officer himself), this also provides a certain level of credibility to the assertion. |
#14
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#15
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hop wrote:
They do have various brackets on various windows. No idea what they normally use. I recall one of them (Don Petit ?) even cooked up a motor drive using one of their cordless drills and some other leftover hardware, so he could do astrophotography. If it wasn't him, it was the sort of thing he did. ("Pettit", BTW). I enjoyed his diary entries immensely; he seemed to make the most of his time in orbit, and then he would put it into words to share with the rest of us. It's an enormous shame that since Ed Lu, nobody seems to have found the time to write a couple of pages every couple of weeks. |
#16
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"Jim Oberg" wrote:
The advantage of hand-held views is the oblique angle on the ground target, especially if it has significant vertical dimension (as a hurricane does). The automated imaging systems are usually straight down from directly overhead. There is nothing inherent about automatic systems (as a class) that limits them to direct overhead shots. (That's not to say that a singular system may not have that limitation.) D. -- Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh. -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings. Oct 5th, 2004 JDL |
#17
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"Jim Oberg" wrote:
"Clark" wrote Google "open skies" and let your suspicions die a quiet death. So, if the Russians WERE using the ISS for military rece photos, you're saying we have no business knowing or caring about it? It's their camera and partially their station... D. -- Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh. -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings. Oct 5th, 2004 JDL |
#18
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"Alan Erskine" wrote:
Jim, what kind of resolution do they get? If it's more than 1 metre, then they can buy all the pickies they need from commercial sources with less risk of creating an international incident. If you buy commercial imagery, I suspect the companies involved tend to keep records of what they have sold to whom. This can be inconvenient at times. D. -- Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh. -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings. Oct 5th, 2004 JDL |
#19
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"Jim Oberg" So, if the Russians WERE using the ISS for military rece photos, you're saying we have no business knowing or caring about it? That's a pretty good way of putting it. I was just thinking about it the other day. If you think about it, some good recon could just as easily defuse military tension as facilitate it. LeCarre said a spy is a person who serves two masters well. |
#20
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Derek Lyons wrote:
So, if the Russians WERE using the ISS for military rece photos, you're saying we have no business knowing or caring about it? It's their camera and partially their station... The ISS agreements do include clauses severely restricting military use of the station. (Originally, the members wanted to fully prohibit military use, but one country refused and forced concessions so that they could make limited military use of it - and that country wasn't Russia). |
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