Giant Chinese Desert Mystery Structure Solved 161
Velcroman1 writes "Slashdotters read Monday about strange symbols in the Gobi Desert recently imaged and indexed by Google Maps. Alien landing zones? Some military thingy? Bizarre art project? Nope. The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets, according to one NASA scientist."
spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Interesting)
So... they correspond to something on the ground they want to match, I betcha. They may have added a few lines to mask their intent, but the drawings to the west look like airfieds and I imagine the two which look like random stuff in a rectangle do match some city roads, somewhere.
Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Informative)
Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Informative)
No, they don't match any other places. They're just for calibration. US has similar ones in Arizona.
And Texas [g.co]. (Although that one was a NASA photogrammetry calibration target, I think..)
Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Informative)
Luecke is used for calibration, but it was not originally intended for that.
IIRC it was done due to a land dispute with the state.
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Just got off the phone with him, he says you're full of shit and also that your mom says "Hi."
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hahaha you're funny. the problem with your idea is that we already have plenty of manmade facilities the same size whose properties are known which could therefore be used for calibration. There is no logic whatosever in having any facilities strictly for satellite calibration. I'm not saying they're not used for same, but I am saying they weren't made for same.
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hahaha you're funny. the problem with your idea is that we already have plenty of manmade facilities the same size whose properties are known which could therefore be used for calibration.
Not to the same degree. OK, sure, you can point it at just about anything and eyeball whether it's in focus or not. But what about sensors outside the visible spectrum? Is there a weak spot in the lower left corner of the thermal imager, or is that part of your calibration target actually cooler for some reason? Only way to be sure is to have thermometers scattered across your target.
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I agree with what you've said, but the problem with the idea is that it's based on the concept that it's easier to go dig up the desert someplace than to plant some thermometers in a well-documented location, and it's just not supported by reality.
Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Interesting)
They're just using it as a controlled environment to test out some new radar based spy satellites and possibly to test countermeasures against similar satellites orbited by other nations. The quasi-random grid layouts are the most visually striking, but I think the fighter jet surrounded by carefully positioned radar reflectors is more interesting. In theory you could mess up the image enough to camouflage your planes from satellite based radar. I could imagine the same being true for some of the qausi-grid layouts as well, they could be testing for multi-path effects or any number of other things.
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An old friend of mine told a story of developing fake fighter jets for the Airforce. Lightweight, easily deployed, looks like a plane from 1000 feet or farther away, and must withstand winds of up to 50 knots "from any direction." Thought being, three guys in a truck could drive to an existing airfield and "deploy" a squadron of jets there in a matter of an hour or less.
The fun part came with the review by the brass... "Very impressive solution with the lightweight canvas and all, but what about the wind
Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Informative)
So... they correspond to something on the ground they want to match, I betcha.
I betcha not. I betcha they send the satellite up with an image of what to look for on the ground and where to find it, the satellite heads above it, and then orients itself until the view on the ground matches the image. The purpose is for the satellite to calibrate its own position and orientation in space. Once that's done then they can just tell the damn thing where to go to look at whatever the hell they want to look at.
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If you successfully send up a spy satellite, you know exactly where your satellite is - it is where you put it, and it is pointing where you asked it to point. Otherwise you didn't successfully send up a spy satellite.
I'm not sure I follow how your post follows as a counter-argument to what amicusNYC said:
the purpose is for the satellite to calibrate its own position and orientation in space.
Yeah, obviously the launcher will know where the bloody satellite is. But that has nothing to do with calibration of the artifact itself. The bloody think still needs to calibrate itself (orientation, lensing, etc.) independently of the launcher's knowledge of its position. In fact, the satellite needs to calibrate itself to confirm his position and trajectory down to base. Then you know the thing is working as intended
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What the fuck? Are you retarded? The satellite needs to do two things, communicate with a base station and perform the maneuvers it's commanded to. There is zero need for it to have any intelligence of its own. It can be useful if it has some, but it is by no means mandatory.
And the base station is telling it to recalibrate, for fault-tolerance and redundancy. Obviously, calling people names while posting anonymous shows your experience and extensive CV in the satellite communications industry, so I bow corrected by your articulate prose.
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Hey, stop peaking at my house! :)
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I think the roofs really are painted that bright blue color.
Now look at the main road, it looks like they have a scale Eiffel tower over this intersection [google.co.uk].
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Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual resolution of a spy satellite is classified. The use of smaller and smaller targets gives away the resolution of the satellite you're using it with. The fact that the targets have been getting smaller and smaller (and it's measurable) just means that they can ballpark the resolution easier.
The Chinese "huge targets" doesn't reveal a thing about the quality of their optics. It could be (as assumed) extremely bad. Or it could be extremely good and they're now focusing on parts of the design. Hell, the other test targets around the world are known - the Chinese could simply be targeting using those targets as well, and using these to throw everyone off.
Part of the role of a good spy is providing disinformation, after all.
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Why don't they use, say, Yankee Stadium then, or the hardscaping on the Washington Mall rather than purpose-built targets?
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You need something that you can be sure is what you think it is. Areas open to the public are prone to changing in ways that you may not be able to predict. This is specifically constructed to be that shape, and it will be that shape every time you point a satellite at it.
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Re:spy satellite calibration targets (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything to me the interesting part is how much more poor the resolution on the Chinese sats are to the Americans since the Chinese targets are fricking huge and the bullseyes they have in AZ go down to some pretty tiny center targets. I'm sure in another decade though they'll have it tight enough they'll be able to read the license on a car, they'll just need a GUI in VB like the CSI guys.
Confirmation bias. The targets you see are only the ones big enough to be seen clearly on Google Maps. If we (or the Chinese or the Russains or whoever) had a spy satellite that could read the year off a quarter, the quarter would just be placed in the correct place and they'd take pictures of it. The fact that you can't see the quarter on Google Maps because GOOGLE doesn't have that kind of resolution doesn't mean nobody does.
Bombs.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't explain why some of the structures have heavy bomb damage.
Assuming no foreign power has been bombing China- I can't fathom why China would bomb their own calibration units.
(unless it was to test what would happen- before an enemy did it to them)
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Assuming their long term plan is autonomous aircraft fighters (as is with other military superpowers), they wouldn't want entire fleets to fail because their calibration site was sabotaged or damaged.
Yes but this way is "easy" to know were the calibration units are. If it was some random existing structure it would be harder to tell.
Re:Bombs.. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they drop bombs there.
Its a bombing range. Used to practice bomb drops by the Chinese military.
Crash Landing (Score:4, Funny)
Are you sure they are Chinese bombs? Perhaps they are UFO crash landings?
Re:Bombs.. (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't explain why some of the structures have heavy bomb damage.
Assuming no foreign power has been bombing China- I can't fathom why China would bomb their own calibration units.
(unless it was to test what would happen- before an enemy did it to them)
Could just be for training in photo/radar interpretation for damage assessment, etc. Seems reasonable to set up a few "known" scenarios so you can train the people (or software) that will be dealing with the actual intelligence product. Probably helpful to see the results of a few known explosions when you are trying to determine how big a bomb France dropped on Libya that one time (actually, France didn't drop any ordnance on Libya; they merely surrendered it from altitude).
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(actually, France didn't drop any ordnance on Libya; they merely surrendered it from altitude).
As a descendant of the French, I laughed at this joke.
Re:Bombs.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't explain why some of the structures have heavy bomb damage.
Assuming no foreign power has been bombing China- I can't fathom why China would bomb their own calibration units.
(unless it was to test what would happen- before an enemy did it to them)
Its pretty clear this is a heavily bombed area, the whole vicinity is riddled with bomb craters. Just a few clicks away from the strange lines is a
runway mock-up, with a shadow mock-up offset from it. Exploring this area [google.com] you can zoom in on this target ad see what appears to b missile booster stages laying around, generally facing east-to-west. They can't be tanker trucks, because they are narrower than the nearby dirt road tracks.
Zooming out from that link shows the two mock airfields.
I'm sure all the major intelligence agencies of the world have very much better photos than these.
Re:Bombs.. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://g.co/maps/39mhb [g.co]
That is near where i live. On google earth it looks like an air base mockup. from the ground, you can't even see the thing. That *was* an air base about 50 years ago. Now its a few foundations and a crumbling runway. Things look a lot different from above.
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Doesn't explain why some of the structures have heavy bomb damage.
It's a reasonable expectation that they would want to test how well their calibration devices work even if the enemy drops bombs on them.
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Unless the damage was FROM the satellite *wink* *wink*...
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Then you'd see a city sized crater, not an exploded buiding.
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That is for a kinetic payoff (just dropping stuff from the satelite). I can't even imagine how do you fire any other thing?
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That's no satellite!
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Basically, you would feed images into your bomb, showing it the path it is to follow and exactly where it is to end up.
In the event of a war, you really cannot expect your enemy to continue to broadcast GPS and homing information for you.
I would suspect all "space-based" assistance would be quickly rendered useless by a few tons of pea-gravel launched into an elliptical polar orbit.
I could see where smart bomb guidance syste
Re:Bombs.. (Score:4, Interesting)
GPS is now so heavily used by so many segments of the civilian world that no nation can afford its loss unless it was about to be annihilated. The more precise signals can be re-encrypted, as they were for a long time, but the basic signal is too ingrained for the US to completely shut down GPS (or remove all access to it).
Re:Bombs.. (Score:4, Insightful)
A big chunk of the US war machine is GPS driven, and if you have a capability to operate without GPS and still hit your targets then you have an advantage.
That's a big "if". Much of the US military uses GPS, but is capable of falling back to more traditional methods. The Chinese military is likely to be just as reliant on GPS, and just as able to utilise fall backs.
The advantage of destroying GPS would probably be relatively minimal, but the disruption it'd cause to civilian operation (including in China) would be huge.
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The article does explain this.
Why Needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
And why would these be needed. There are already many structures easily visible form space and static, so why not just use one of those?
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Ancient Chinese espionage secret.
Re:Why Needed? (Score:4, Funny)
Who wants some Wang?!
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Perhaps they were worried about hacking. After all the US has had satellites hacked. It would cost more to duplicate their calibration patterns (and couldn't be put up on the fly).
Antenna arrays could be duplicated and potentially be portable.
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If they did that the US would spend their military budget on building weapons instead of trying to figure out what the Chinese were up to.
Re:Why Needed? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, from reading the article, I gather that it's because they might have needed something bigger because the resolution on their spy satellites is not that good. FTFA: "The calibration targets are larger than might have been expected, he said, suggesting that the satellite cameras they are being used to calibrate have surprisingly poor ground resolution."
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But if there was absolutely nothing on earth they these poor cameras could see clearly then how are they useful in the first place?
Re:Why Needed? (Score:4, Informative)
Calibration is one thing, and actually seeing shit is something else. Maybe they just wanted to make calibration easy with a big easy target to calibrate against.
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Re:Why Needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
And why would these be needed. There are already many structures easily visible form space and static, so why not just use one of those?
Lots of reasons for purpose-built ones. You know exact dimensions, they can be made any size/shape/color/material necessary to test the specifics of your imaging system, and they are presumably placed in the desert because there is rarely cloud cover - so good availability. Trying to use various existing objects/places presents all sorts of additional variables that they may wish to avoid.
Re:Why Needed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because you have corps that build things that need exorcise too? Might as well have one big project with multiple uses.
Logistics guys get practice... logisticing?
Engineer guys get practice building.
Sat guys get free calibration and practice doing their stuff.
Bombardiers and other munitions guys get practice shooting at it.
Intel guys get practice doing damage assessments.
R&D probably gets a chance to test a bunch of stuff, too.
The list goes on. The question is "why not?"
Expert? (Score:1)
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Maybe he's just assuming that's what it is because he's familiar with the satellite calibration patterns that the US used with Corona in the 60s. Or maybe it's just a guess.
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Map Soviet harvests, drug plantations - funded as agricultural satellites.
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Because this calibration field is for our satellites. We outsourced it. We also outsourced the satellites.
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Seriously? (Score:3)
This was my first thought when seeing the pictures. It looks like a giant test pattern used for cameras, given the size, likely satellite photography.
Painted roads and buildings (Score:5, Interesting)
The 'structures' are lines painted on the ground used for target practice.
Its a documented bomb range with an airport and a simulated airport to bomb as well.
If you bother to zoom out on Google Maps you can figure it out fairly quickly, oh and a few Google searchs will reveal that we've known this for years.
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I hope they don't get the two confused! That would make for a whole helluva lot of paperwork...
Indian government, take note (Score:5, Funny)
Free satellite calibration provided over China
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Chinese government goes open source with spy calibration tools!
Nope. (Score:2)
Alien landing zones? Some military thingy? Bizarre art project? Nope.
Chuck Testa.
I am not fooled. (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm is the Godi neutral gray as well? (Score:3)
Talk about your white balance target!
Yep! (Score:2)
It's the queers. (Score:2, Informative)
They're in it with the aliens. They're building landing strips for gay martians. I swear to God.
They're for people, not satellites... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's my theory about the weird assemblage of lines and angles.
They are to test the people tasked with interpreting imagery from spy satellites -- not the optics of the satellites themselves.
Here's how it would work:
1. The powers-that-be paint lines of varying lengths intersecting at varying angles, and over a non-flat surface (note the evidence of water drainage over some of the lines).
2. They use their spy satellites to capture imagery of the lines at various distances and elevations.
3. Their interpreters use these images to reconstruct the lengths/angles of the various lines.
4. The powers-that-be check the interpreters' reconstructions with what they know was actually painted on ground.
5. The interpreters learn how to accurately reconstruct measurements from spy satellite imagery, and thereby gain knowledge of what other countries are doing.
6. Profit! (or something) :-)
Ah! (Score:2)
So now we know what the Nazca lines were for.
Giant antenna array (Score:2)
Dammit, is nobody else interested in the giant antenna array [lifeslittlemysteries.com]?
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http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.458679,93.31314%09&hl=en&ll=40.474701,93.509531&spn=0.053604,0.132093&sll=40.458018,93.392587&sspn=0.0208,0.040426&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=14 [google.com]
ugh! (Score:2)
You linked to FOX News...
(which is, if nothing else, predictably consistent about whipping up paranoia about the Chinese Menace...wonder who benefits from that?)
Military thingy? (Score:2)
Some military thingy? Nope.
Tags: military
Do we distinguish government intelligence ops from the military? Even when they involve China? Even when they involve orbital satellites?
New tag: spymantics
Well, he might be an expert... (Score:3)
Well, he might be an expert in something regarding Mars, but he knows nothing about camera calibration targets.
Because this [google.com] (the array of lines) is what a camera calibration target looks like. The lines let you test for distortion, the spacing between the lines lets you test for resolution. Just like TV test patterns [wikipedia.org] they're carefully designed to present exactly the features you want to test for. They aren't semi random fractal patterns, and they aren't allowed to degrade the way the ones in the Chines desert have.
The same goes for his "radar test target" - it looks precisely nothing like how aircraft normally appear on flight lines or adjacent to hangars.
Nah, it's just FSM messin' with ya (Score:2)
But watch out for the space pirates. Some of them even steal ice.
Artefact (Score:2)
More oddities (Score:3)
So can anyone tell me what the circled numbers 1 to 5 are:
here [google.co.uk]
40ft across, irregularly spaced, close to something the size of a soccer/football field.
Image processing problem (Score:2)
I think that what we see on Google Maps is just a weird composition of several satellite images taken at days when the mountains were covered by snow and on days when there was no snow. That's it.
Chinese window grammar? (Score:2)
http://web.mit.edu/~haldane/www/icerays/ [mit.edu]
Does Type II look familiar? There is even code for you to generate your own geometric window grille.
See also this link:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u41779k5083148p7 [springerlink.com]
Makes sense... (Score:2)
Really makes sense when you think of it, I do not know why they did not think of this 20 years ago!.....maybe could have avoided many collisions up there??
Real estate development? (Score:2)
It's going to be embarrassing if this turns out just to be a failed real estate development. China has those too.
Compare this image from Google Maps. [google.com] There's a nice "alignment target" in the middle of nowhere. It was supposed to be an industrial park near Dubai, but never got beyond road building. The China one looks like a project that never got beyond bulldozer stage.
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Well, it's a bombing range too, apparently.
I wouldn't doubt they used it as an exercise engineer corp as well.
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A lot of people have pointed out that some targets are bomb damaged, others have military jets parked in the middle, etc. Odds are they're using the sites to test their equipment in all sorts of novel set-ups, recreating "enemy bases", seeing how their equipment deals with random craters in the image, and so forth. Not the sort of thing it'd be easy to replicate just by taking pictures of existing sites.
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In Soviet Russia whopper eat YOU!
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You know that's great, but what are you going to do about zombies?
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Carry a jar of pickled brains.
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...getting a sense of scale is rather tricky.
Use Google earth. It has a measuring tool that's surprisingly accurate. For kicks I used it to measure a local (American) football field and it was accurate almost to the foot.