Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Manufactured by Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California, the KH-11 was the first American spy satellite to use electro-optical digital imaging, and so offer real-time optical observations. [7] Later KH-11 satellites have been referred to by outside observers as KH-11B or KH-12, and by the names "Advanced KENNEN", "Improved Crystal" and "Ikon".
Key Hole (KH) is the designation for a series of American optical reconnaissance satellites: . KH-1 Corona; KH-2 Corona; KH-3 Corona; KH-4 Corona; KH-5 Argon; KH-6 Lanyard; KH-7 Gambit; KH-8 Gambit 3
USA-245 or NRO Launch 65 (NROL-65) is an American reconnaissance satellite which is operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. Launched in August 2013, it is the last Block 4 KH-11 reconnaissance satellite, and the last official spacecraft to be launched in the Keyhole program. [2]
As the fifteenth KH-11 satellite to be launched, USA-224 is a member of one of the later block configurations occasionally identified as being a separate system. Details of its mission and orbit are classified, but amateur observers have tracked it in low Earth orbit .
A few up-to-date reconnaissance satellite images have been declassified on occasion, or leaked, as in the case of KH-11 photographs which were sent to Jane's Defence Weekly in 1984, [3] or US President Donald Trump tweeting a classified image of the aftermath of a failed test of Iran's Safir rocket in 2019. [4] [5]
KH-9 (BYEMAN codename HEXAGON), commonly known as Big Bird or KeyHole-9, [1] was a series of photographic reconnaissance satellites launched by the United States between 1971 and 1986. Of twenty launch attempts by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), all but one were successful. [ 2 ]
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
That same year, Jane's Defence Weekly was provided with several images taken by a KH-11 satellite of a Soviet naval shipbuilding facility. A 1984 computer-enhanced KH-11 photo, taken at an oblique angle, was leaked, along with two others, to Jane's Defence Weekly. The image shows the general layout of the Nikolaiev 444 shipyard on the Black Sea.