As with many of my shorter pieces, they are inspired by some
short topic on NPR, my exclusive source of news from outside my optics bubble. This
morning there was a piece by the sports commentator, Frank DeFoe. He had come across a marketing piece from
Stanford that related the outcome of a scientific study on our circadian
rhythm, a well-known concept to frequent flyers. I myself just passed 2 million
airline miles, although a colleague has us all beat, as he has cleared 5 million
and is still on the move, versus me, who is now traveling slightly less than
100,000 per year.
Now to the Frank Defoe piece. It seems on relatively rare
occasions, every few weeks for half of the year, NFL games are played at night
between a team from the East Coast and one from the West Coast. A well-established trend is that people
experience a surge of attention and performance at about 6 pm on any given day,
and by 10 pm most of us are on marginal power. So, if one were to study the
outcome of NFL evening football games between East and West Coast teams, which
typically start about 8 pm EST, one might see a trend. This was the Stanford
scientists’ hypothesis. Specifically, independent of which coast the game is
played on, from the above observed behavior, the West Coast team always has the
advantage (I’ll let you process that). Sure enough, the scientists at Stanford determined
from 25 years of compiled data that the West Coast team wins 70% of the time,
versus a 50% split for the more typical day games. Frank suggested that listeners
place their bets accordingly.
This reminds me of my favorite NPR report years ago on
behavioral science. There was a science team that received a grant to travel to
some 25 cities around the world, where they would foist the following three
scenarios on an unsuspecting public.
They would drive through the city and record the
accuracy of the public square and other outdoor building clocks. Guess who won?
You’re right.
At noon, in a busy part of town, they set up
cones about 50 yards apart on a sidewalk and recorded the time it took passersby
to traverse the span. The winner (in a manner of speaking) was New York City. The city with the least-fast pedestrians also
took the prize for test number 3.
This last scenario is my favorite. They went to
the post office and bought one 2-cent (or the lowest denomination) stamp, with
a $50 or other large bill and timed the transaction. In one city, the clerk
closed the window and walked away until they left.
So, we need to be creative with our proposals and figure out
how to do science around the world. The closest attempt I’ve seen was an NSF
proposal to travel to every large telescope site in world and improve their
alignment. I never heard if it was funded.
Now, there is a big number. Care to guess what it represents? Time’s up. This would be “The WISE Source Catalog,” which “contains the attributes for 563,921,584 point-like and resolved objects detected on the Atlas Intensity images. Catalog sources are required to have a measured SNR>5 in at least one band, and to meet other criteria to ensure a high degree of reliability.” There were 284,000,000 other objects that were identified but failed to meet the above criterion. So, now you know what you can do to keep your mind active in retirement. Pick one, or 100, or 100,000 of these and try to help the astronomers figure out what it all means. This is one of many sky surveys, currently a focus of astronomy missions.
This one, WISE, stands for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. “WISE imaged the entire sky with multiple, independent exposures during its full cryogenic survey. All four bands were imaged simultaneously during each exposure, and the exposure times were 7.7 sec in W1 and W2 and 8.8 sec in W3 and W4. As illustrated in Figure 1, the survey scanning strategy resulted in 12 to 13 exposures of each point on the ecliptic plane. Coverage increases to over 3000 exposures at the ecliptic poles. WISE completed its first complete sky coverage on 17 July 2010 and surveyed approximately 20% of the sky a second time before the end of the full cryogenic mission phase.”
ORA’s (now Synopsys’) own Mark Kahan was a significant contributor to the review panel that monitored the design through deployment of the WISE system. I’ll keep this short so you push the button. DO GO to the link and check it out a bit. Although there are more survey telescopes to come, including the ground-based Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will be described in an upcoming blog, one could argue that the astronomical analysts have enough on their collective plate for awhile.
Below is my favorite from a short visit to the site (click on past images at the bottom of the page; this one is from July 8, 2009). This is a collection of the 258 nearest galaxies. Why 258, you ask? This is the number of galaxies included in the so-called Local Volume Legacy Survey, built from GALEX and Spitzer Images, and intended to include all galaxies within 3.5 Mpc and a complete sample within 11 Mpc (see http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/703/1/517/pdf/0004-637X_703_1_517.pdf). WISE's data will likely undergo similar processing in the future.
Galaxies in the Local Volume Legacy survey (LVL), a study of 258 of the nearest galaxies. In these three-color images, 3.6 um emission is blue, 8 um emission is green, and 24 um emission is red. Credit: Shawn Staudaher (U. Wyoming) and the LVL team.
This is worth pausing on – yet another event on the timeline to smaller and faster. The folks at MIT, who appear to be the US answer to the Fraunhofer Institute, report in the New York Times today yet another step in making things faster.
We all know that the eye responds at a rate such that 30 frames per second (fps) or, better yet, 60 fps is indistinguishable from continuous to us. Electronic cameras of course do not have the limits of the eye (I once developed a system to operate at 3,000 fps). MIT operates in a different space than mere mortals and they have recently completed a somewhat faster camera at -- wait for it (but not too long) --
500 fpns = 500,000,000,000 fps
Now, why that number? A useful unit to carry around these days might be the speed of light, something that is difficult to make relevant, but here is an attempt. Light does not travel at 3x10^8 m/sec (it does, but who can relate), it travels at 1 foot/nanosecond. Those feet and inches just don’t go away. We can relate to the foot, but what about the nanosecond? Can we relate? Let’s try. When we’re in our car, we often go 60 mph, or, as you often learn in physics, 88 fps (as in feet per second). OK, now let’s think about the smallest unit of length we can visualize. Clearly we can see 1 mm on a ruler, so let’s make 0.1mm as the smallest thing we can see. Also, most of us get on a plane every now and then and go not 60 mph, but 600 mph.
So what can we almost relate to? 600 mph is 880 feet per second (about a football field’s length), about 10,000 inches per second (12X) or 250,000 mm per second (25X), or 2,500,000 of the smallest unit you can visualize (100 microns) in a second. Perhaps the main point of this little exercise is that we aren’t even close; we are only halfway there in log space and who can think in log space? If you can, you’re halfway there! We have no way to relate to the speed of a camera that is framing faster enough to “see” light travel through a scene. So you’ll just have to watch MIT’s video and not relate.
Check out the New York Times article with link to MIT video before it goes away (sent to me by Doug Nutter):
SCIENCE | December 13, 2011 Speed of Light Lingers in Face of New Camera By JOHN MARKOFF M.I.T. researchers have built a camera that can take images at intervals of a trillionth of a second.
This new camera is yet another pillar in the roadmap of science making light relevant. The article opens with a reference to Edgerton, whom I assume all readers know. If not, you may want to look at his images from the 1950s (or 1930s, can’t remember – there are some neat flip books at museums of his photos and you can get some of his images from the used book list). Edgerton was the master of scientific strobe photography. Also, you must be aware of the epic perspective book, “Powers of Ten” (if not, Google “Powers of Ten” and act accordingly). This is one of the absolute best books for appreciating the spatial scale of things. Clearly we now need, and can produce, the Powers of Ten in the fourth dimension – can’t wait.
The latest issue of Information Display from the Society for Information Display (SID) has a couple of articles that are somewhat of a high-end Consumer Reports coverage of TVs, particularly plasma. I, for one, had formed the opinion that plasma TVs were off the map as a personal consumer. Apparently, even if that may have been right the last time I bought a TV (I don’t do this very often), it is clearly not a given now.
The takeaway from the articles (should you not be a member) is that plasmas are now less expensive than competing LCD units. The key selection criterion is whether you watch TV in an environment with high-ambient lighting – that is, a room with floor-to-ceiling windows where you are watching when the sun is not down (who has time). If that is the case, then the clear consensus is LCD. However, if you are more of an after-the-kids-go-to-bed TV watcher, then plasma is the clear winner. Also, if you happen to be one of the few that have gone 3D, plasma is a faster technology that is intrinsically better for 3D.
Another valuable item from this issue is they point to a particularly educated purveyor of TVs in Scarborough NY, with an Internet presence: Value Electronics.
There are additional articles on the status of the higher-tech stuff you may be interested in. I am not in the market this year (or am I?) but I thought this was a valuable issue that you might otherwise miss.
Three items crossed through the ether on the weekend, one is somewhat long awaited (if you consider 5 years long), one that continues the march to making everything look inspiring, and one that even itself is not sure what it is. The one in the middle is not even a thing, it is software.
Starting with what could either be revolutionizing digital photography (again) or go into the laser disc category (I actually acquired a laser disc player with my most recent house, although I don’t have a laser disc) – the gadget being name the Lytro. Since these guys are probably copyright sensitive at this point, simply typing the code name, “Lytro” into Google will give you an onslaught of sites. For those who have not been following this, this is the first implementation of what has come to be called “Lightfield Imaging”, discover, invented, or recognized by Prof. McVoy at Stanford and his student Ng. It was first presented to the science audience at IODC in 2006, of all places. Even then, the answers to questions were, “you’ll have to talk to my lawyer”. This technology records not just a projected spatial intensity maps (what we call a photograph) but this device also records the intensity as a function of direction. Conceptually, the net results being you’ve stored all the data in 3D so that you can decide what is in focus in your photo whenever you want. Now, one might say – then why bother me, just put everything in focus. But, the developers seem to think there are photographers out there that feel fuzzy is artistic and therefore have allowed you to make whatever you want fuzzy, or sharp. On the Google list, it was noted that until Oct. 12, you couldn’t buy one without a “reservation code”.
Also, on the list, was something I started to hear about earlier in the week, but, it showed up as a specific link from John Tamkin. The new thing is, in my mind, Super Photoshop. Apparently there are many who want to add things to their photos, that aren’t there (I don’t get it, but, I’m becoming old school I can see). In any case, the site below guides you through how you can now add furniture to rooms that are lacking (actually in my house it would be to add floor where there are currently piles of books).
And, to complete the weekend there is the somewhat older news of Looxcie. This is a tri focal length web cam you can wear on your ear – something I always wanted to do? Available today through SkyMall (I’ve been on a lot of airplanes this month).
The catch phrases are “see what you see”, hmmm, and “catch those unexpected moments” – that can go few places. So, now you’re caught up. I’m not sure, yet, if you missed anything, we’ll see.
PS: Even before we could launch this out the door, yet another “photo toy” appeared on the web that many have enjoyed. Spotted by our web-watcher, Mark Kahan, this is the “ball camera” Quite fun too. 1 minute and 41 seconds – you can do it J
This note was brought to my attention by Mark Kahan, as are many things. I must admit, after Jurassic Park one does occasionally consider what would the world be like if the dinosaurs had not decided to exit. It’s one thing to occasionally encounter a grizzly, or a whale, but a tyrannosaurus? Instead of Tornado reports, we could have dino-reports, seems like the outcomes might be similar.
Fortunately, we digress. But, apparently someone has way too much time on their hands and they have been trying to work back in time to find which asteroid careened out of orbit after an interaction with another object. They succeeded; in finding one asteroid that did not do that. Enough said. Considering they just launched this thing, I guess this is a pressing question. Read on.
Spacecraft casts doubt on alleged culprit for dinosaur extinction
Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs is not likely the culprit, keeping the case open on one of Earth's greatest mysteries.
While scientists are confident a large asteroid crashed into Earth approximately 65 million years ago, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs and some other lifeforms on our planet, they do not know exactly where the asteroid came from or how it made its way to Earth. A 2007 study using visible-light data from ground-based telescopes first suggested the remnant of a huge asteroid, known as Baptistina, as a possible suspect.
According to that theory, Baptistina crashed into another asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter about 160 million years ago. The collision sent shattered pieces as big as mountains flying. One of those pieces was believed to have impacted Earth, causing the dinosaurs' extinction.
Since this scenario was first proposed, evidence developed that the so-called Baptistina family of asteroids was not the responsible party. With the new infrared observations from WISE, astronomers say Baptistina may finally be ruled out.
"As a result of the WISE science team's investigation, the demise of the dinosaurs remains in the cold case files," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The original calculations with visible light estimated the size and reflectivity of the Baptistina family members, leading to estimates of their age, but we now know those estimates were off. With infrared light, WISE was able to get a more accurate estimate, which throws the timing of the Baptistina theory into question."
WISE surveyed the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011. The asteroid-hunting portion of the mission, called NEOWISE, used the data to catalogue more than 157,000 asteroids in the main belt and discovered more than 33,000 new ones.
Visible light reflects off an asteroid. Without knowing how reflective the surface of the asteroid is, it's hard to accurately establish size. Infrared observations allow a more accurate size estimate. They detect infrared light coming from the asteroid itself, which is related to the body's temperature and size. Once the size is known, the object's reflectivity can be re-calculated by combining infrared with visible-light data.
The NEOWISE team measured the reflectivity and the size of about 120,000 asteroids in the main belt, including 1,056 members of the Baptistina family. The scientists calculated the original parent Baptistina asteroid actually broke up closer to 80 million years ago, half as long as originally proposed.
This calculation was possible because the size and reflectivity of the asteroid family members indicate how much time would have been required to reach their current locations -- larger asteroids would not disperse in their orbits as fast as smaller ones. The results revealed a chunk of the original Baptistina asteroid needed to hit Earth in less time than previously believed, in just about 15 million years, to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.
"This doesn't give the remnants from the collision very much time to move into a resonance spot, and get flung down to Earth 65 million years ago," said Amy Mainzer, a study co-author and the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Calif. "This process is thought to normally take many tens of millions of years." Resonances are areas in the main belt where gravity nudges from Jupiter and Saturn can act like a pinball machine to fling asteroids out of the main belt and into the region near Earth.
The asteroid family that produced the dinosaur-killing asteroid remains at large. Evidence that a 10-kilometer asteroid impacted Earth 65 million years ago includes a huge, crater-shaped structure in the Gulf of Mexico and rare minerals in the fossil record, which are common in meteorites but seldom found in Earth's crust. In addition to the Baptistina results, the NEOWISE study shows various main belt asteroid families have similar reflective properties. The team hopes to use NEOWISE data to disentangle families that overlap and trace their histories.
"We are working on creating an asteroid family tree of sorts," said Joseph Masiero, the lead author of the study. "We are starting to refine our picture of how the asteroids in the main belt smashed together and mixed up."
JPL manages and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. The principal investigator, astronomer Edward Wright, is at UCLA.
The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan.
The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
This is just in case you missed it. Over the weekend, the project that created Perkin-Elmer’s government division (near as I can tell, I worked there from 1980-1985) and led, I would imagine to the demise of Itek, was revealed in Washington. I had heard about the legends of “Big Bird”, the unclassified name for this program (for those that skipped this phase, many classified programs have unclassified names, they always have two words in them, so I’m told) for decades now. But, I must say, this thing is startlingly large. Phil Pressel, who has been leading the charge to declassify this mission, after CORONA’s declassification (Itek’s precursor to this) is someone I worked closely with at PE, on other programs. Phil has written a book and it is in the final stages of being approved for publication. You’ll be one of the first to know (and I’m counting on an autograph copy). So, if you haven’t seen this, read on –
PS – regarding actually seeing it, given that this was a short notice, one-day event that we all missed, if you can get into NRO, go, it is there, under a large tent I hear. If that doesn’t work for you (or me); next summer it is due to be unveiled for a 2-year run at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base museum in Dayton, OH. OK, that is the only reason to go to Dayton, OH, but, I will be there and I’ll post something to perhaps encourage you to do the same.
The massive KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center, after being declassified on Sept. 17, 2011. Longer than a school bus at 60 feet in length and weighing 30,000 pounds at launch, 20 KH-9 Hexagons were launched by the National Reconnaissance Office between 1971 and 1986. CREDIT: Roger Guillemette/SPACE.com
CHANTILLY, Va. – Twenty-five years after their top-secret, Cold War-era missions ended, two clandestine American satellite programs were declassified Saturday (Sept. 17) with the unveiling of three of the United States' most closely guarded assets: the KH-7 GAMBIT, the KH-8 GAMBIT 3 and the KH-9 HEXAGON spy satellites.
The vintage National Reconnaissance Office satellites were displayed to the public Saturday in a one-day-only exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, Va. The three spacecraft were the centerpiece of the NRO's invitation-only, 50th Anniversary Gala celebration held at the center last evening.
Secret satellites that reveal targets even in night is the claim of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) - as evidenced by this NRO patch. CREDIT: NRO
Saturday's spysat unveiling was attended by a number of jubilant NRO veterans who developed and refined the classified spacecraft and its components for decades in secret, finally able to show their wives and families what they actually did 'at the office' for so many years. Both of the newly declassified satellite systems, GAMBIT and HEXAGON, followed the U.S. military's frontrunner spy satellite system CORONA, which was declassified in 1995. [See photos of the declassified U.S. spy satellites]
This National Reconnaissance Office released graphic depicts the huge HEXAGON spy satellite, a Cold War era surveillance craft that flew reconnaissance missions from 1971 to 1986. The bus-size satellites weighed 30,000 pounds and were 60 feet long. CREDIT: NRO
Big spy satellites revealed
The KH-9 HEXAGON, often referred to by its popular nickname "Big Bird," lived up to its legendary expectations. As large as a school bus, the KH-9 HEXAGON carried 60 miles of high resolution photographic film for space surveillance missions.
Military space historian Dwayne A. Day was exuberant after his first look at the KH-9 HEXAGON.
"This was some bad-ass technology," Day told SPACE.com. "The Russians didn't have anything like it."
Day, co-editor of "Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CoronaSpy Satellites," noted that "it took the Soviets on average five to 10 years to catch up during the Cold War, and in many cases they never really matched American capabilities."
Phil Pressel, designer of the HEXAGON's panoramic 'optical bar' imaging cameras, agreed with Day's assessment.
"This is still the most complicated system we've ever put into orbit …Period."
The HEXAGON's twin optical bar panoramic mirror cameras rotated as the swept back and forth as the satellite flew over Earth, a process that intelligence officials referred to as "mowing the lawn."
Phil Pressel, one of the developers of the KH-9 Hexagon's panoramic camera system, proudly points out some of the spacecraft's once highly-classified features, a life's work that he had been unable to discuss publicly until the NRO's Sept. 17, 2011 declassification of the massive spy satellite. CREDIT: Roger Guillemette/SPACE.com
Each 6-inch wide frame of HEXAGON film capturing a wide swath of terrain covering 370 nautical miles — the distance from Cincinnati to Washington — on each pass over the former Soviet Union and China. The satellites had a resolution of about 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to nearly 1 meter), according to the NRO. [10 Ways the Government Watches You]
According to documents released by the NRO, each HEXAGON satellite mission lasted about 124 days, with the satellite launching four film return capsules that could send its photos back to Earth. An aircraft would catch the return capsule in mid-air by snagging its parachute following the canister's re-entry.
In a fascinating footnote, the film bucket from the first KH-9 HEXAGON sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in spring 1972 after Air Force recovery aircraft failed to snag the bucket's parachute.
The film inside the protective bucket reported contained high resolution photographs of the Soviet Union's submarine bases and missile silos. In a daredevil feat of clandestine ingenuity, the U.S. Navy's Deep Submergence Vehicle Trieste II succeeded in grasping the bucket from a depth of 3 miles below the ocean.
Hubble vs. HEXAGON
Former International Space Station flight controller Rob Landis, now technical manager in the advanced projects office at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, drove more than three hours to see the veil lifted from these legendary spacecraft.
Landis, who also worked on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope program, noticed some distinct similarities between Hubble and the huge KH-9 HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite.
"I see a lot of Hubble heritage in this spacecraft, most notably in terms of spacecraft size," Landis said. "Once the space shuttle design was settled upon, the design of Hubble — at the time it was called the Large Space Telescope — was set upon. I can imagine that there may have been a convergence or confluence of the designs. The Hubble’s primary mirror is 2.4 meters [7.9 feet] in diameter and the spacecraft is 14 feet in diameter. Both vehicles (KH-9 and Hubble) would fit into the shuttle's cargo bay lengthwise, the KH-9 being longer than Hubble [60 feet]; both would also fit on a Titan-class launch vehicle."
The 'convergence or confluence' theory was confirmed later in the day by a former spacecraft designer, who declined to be named but is familiar with both programs, who confided unequivocally: "The space shuttle's payload bay was sized to accommodate the KH-9."
The NRO launched 20 KH-9 HEXAGON satellites from California's Vandenberg AFB from June 1971 to April 1986.
The HEXAGON's final launch in April 1986 — just months after the space shuttle Challenger explosion — also met with disaster as the spy satellite's Titan 34D booster erupted into a massive fireball just seconds after liftoff, crippling the NRO's orbital reconnaissance capabilities for many months.
A side view of a KH-7 GAMBIT spy satellite on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, Va., on Sept. 17, 2011. CREDIT: Roger Guillemette/SPACE.com
The spy satellite GAMBIT
Before the first HEXAGON spy satellite systems ever launched, the NRO's GAMBIT series of reconnaissance craft flew several space missions aimed at providing surveillance over specific targets around the world.
The satellite program's initial system, GAMBIT 1, first launched in 1963 carrying a KH-7 camera system that included a "77-inch focal length camera for providing specific information on scientific and technical capabilities that threatened the nation," according to an NRO description. A second GAMBIT satellite system, which first launched aboard GAMBIT 3 in 1966, included a175-inch focal length camera. [Related:Anatomy of a Spy Satellite]
The GAMBIT 1 series satellite has a resolution similar to the HEXAGON series, about 2 to 3 feet, but the follow-up GAMBIT 3 system had an improved resolution of better than 2 feet, NRO documents reveal.
The GAMBIT satellite program was active from July 1963 to April 1984. Both satellites were huge and launched out of Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The satellite series' initial version was 15 feet (4.5 m) long and 5 feet (1.5 m) wide, and weighed about 1,154 pounds (523 kilograms). The GAMBIT 3 satellite was the same width but longer, stretching nearly 29 feet (9 m) long, not counting its Agena D rocket upper stage. It weighed about 4,130 pounds (1,873 kg).
Unlike the follow-up HEXAGON satellites, the GAMBIT series were designed for extremely short missions.
The GAMBIT 1 craft had an average mission life of about 6 1/2 days. A total of 38 missions were launched, though 10 of them were deemed failures, according to NRO documents.
The GAMBIT 3 series satellites had missions that averaged about 31 days. In all, 54 of the satellites were launched, with four failures recorded.
Like the CORONA and HEXAGON programs, the GAMBIT series of satellites returned their film to Earth in re-entry capsules that were then snatched up by recovery aircraft. GAMBIT 1 carried about 3,000 feet (914 meters) of film, while GAMBIT 3 was packed with 12,241 feet (3,731 meters) of film, NRO records show.
The behemoth HEXAGON was launched with 60 miles (320,000 feet) of film!
This image shows the flight profile for the NRO's GAMBIT 3 spy satellite missions between 1966 and 1984. The program was declassified in Sept. 2011. CREDIT: NRO
HEXAGON and GAMBIT 3 team up
During a media briefing, NRO officials confirmed to SPACE.com that the KH-8 GAMBIT 3 and KH-9 HEXAGON were later operated in tandem, teaming-up to photograph areas of military significance in both the former Soviet Union and China.
The KH-9 would image a wide swath of terrain, later scrutinized by imagery analysts on the ground for so-called ‘targets of opportunity.' Once these potential targets were identified, a KH-8 would then be maneuvered to photograph the location in much higher resolution.
"During the era of these satellites — the GAMBIT and the HEXAGON — there was a Director of Central Intelligence committee known as the 'Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation' that was responsible for that type of planning," confirmed the NRO's Robert McDonald, Director of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance.
NASA's Rob Landis was both blunt and philosophical in his emotions over the declassification of the GAMBIT and HEXAGON programs.
"You have to give credit to leaders like President Eisenhower who had the vision to initiatereconnaissance spacecraft, beginning with the CORONA and Discoverer programs," Landis said. "He was of the generation who wanted no more surprises, no more Pearl Harbors."
"Frankly, I think that GAMBIT and HEXAGON helped prevent World War III."
Editor's note: This story was updated on Sept. 19 to correct the name of Phil Pressel, who designed the HEXAGON spy satellite camera system.
I’m in at the University Bordeaux this week learning about their research in virtual and augmented reality, where I was invited to ArcheoVision. This is a museum of archeology that is experimenting with the use of virtual reality combined with robotic replication based on high technology laser scanning to creative an environment that will attract, educate, and entertain the public without compromising the science of archeology, including monster (15 foot) reproduction marble statues (very cool – you can even order your own - $30,000). They also offer to scan your head in 3D and make an accurate marble bust, for, you know what, only $2,999 (actually very cool too, we’re considering it).
We met with Prof. Robert Vernieux, an archeologist’s archeologist who spent nearly 15 years in Egypt. He is now involved in many things, one being creating 3-D environments for the general public. There are a few paths. In one case, they have created a 3-D image file of ancient objects, which are then projected in a small theater environment, with some reasonable quality projectors. In this way, otherwise small perhaps nondescript objects can become a center of attention. Rather than lying up on the screen, 15 feet away, the 3D projection can effectively place it in your hand as a sharp, clear, fascinating image. When combined with the lecture that places the piece in context, for a scientist at least, it definitely keeps you awake. The second series we saw was a projection of antique amateur stereo postcards. What has happened is Prof. Vernieux came upon a collection at a market in Egypt and brought them back to France where they are scanned and interfaced to the auditorium projectors. Again for me at least, these were fascinating and I think I could have easily watched them for an hour. Based on the success of the stereo postcards he found, from 1868 and 1903, of ruins in Egypt being excavated by archeologists, the center has advertised that they are accepting donations of stereo postcards from Egypt. They have been sent thousands that they are now scanning. But, the public is not coming in droves. The place is rather quiet.
Now, to the point. A group of scientists then gathered for a few hours to discuss whether 3D is viable. It is not clear. It is currently a technology that is extremely data intensive and often overwhelmingly time consuming. The consensus is the 3D technology is currently somewhat of a toy, that pretty much everyone enjoys, for about 10 minutes, and then they say, “is that all there is?”, the answer often being – yes.
An interesting observation, after designing a 3D “Cave” experience for the museum; everyone remembers the Cave, the delivery of the 3D technology, and no one remembers the archeology. This is not the goal.
So, as always, this is just a random musing, but, it will be interesting to see if 3-D becomes a standard technology in the next decade, or, goes the way of the laser disc player (which I happened to inherit with the house I recently bought – I have a great player, but, no discs – may have to do something about that).
Should you speak French (I don’t), you might enjoy,
has an outstanding article on how one individual contributor can compromise a complex operation; a topic that is rising in visibility. This was a topic for the recent panel discussion at DV-CON and will be a topic at the upcoming DAC conference in San Diego, where I am speaking at a Monday evening event, sponsored by Synopsys.
I have not followed or had an interest in hacking, or security, or the Sony problem, but, it has had enough press that I did click on the link when it appeared this morning. The article is interesting as a look inside of the science of hacking, but, it elevated to a Blog topic when I came to the “lessons learned” paragraph, which is an excellent statement of the theme of some of my own latest talks.
To pique you interest enough to go to the article by Mike Borza, I have extracted the lessons learned. If you go to the article via the link, you will find the rest of the story, which I recommend if you have an addition 3-4 minutes (it’s worth it, really).
The following is extracted from the link above, written by
Author Information
Mike Borza is founder and chief technology officer of embedded security specialist Elliptic Technologies Inc. He was also a founder and chief technology officer of network security appliances company Startle Networks. At Chrysalis-ITS (now Safenet), he worked with customers of the Luna series of network security processors as director of applications engineering. Earlier in his career, he was involved in biometric identity management systems design, safety-critical systems engineering, and optoelectronics design and manufacturing. Borza was a founding director of business networking forum The Ottawa Network. He has been an active contributor to the Security Task Group of IEEE 802.1 and was an editor of the 802.1AR Secure Device Identifier standard
“Lessons learned”
“What teachings can come from the PS3 hack? Certainly, many detailed issues allowed the attackers to peel successive layers off the PS3 security onion; these are important in their own right. But the bigger issue is that systems' security architecture and design are frequently undertaken at the very end of development, sometimes as an afterthought and sometimes simply resulting from scheduling issues, as the development of primary system functionality moves toward the product release date. This reality leaves security system development insufficiently resourced and reviewed, in the context of the value it is intended to protect for the whole system. This decision is a mistake. If a system is worth protecting, it is worth protecting well. Some ideas to consider:
Protect those things that need protection. This statement is not meant to be trite; identification of the assets to be protected is an important first step in developing a plan to protect them. From the outset, the PS3 was marketed as much more than a game console; part of what was sold to people was the ability to run another operating system. This decision required a security subsystem that met the needs of the gaming and media ecosystems, restricting access to content and services when the PS3 was running its factory OS. Limiting protection to this objective likely would have been much easier to achieve than retroactively trying to limit what versions of system code could run on the platform. In effect, the security objectives were changed after the fact to protect against what in reality was a non-threat. The result was an attack that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations.
Be realistic in assessing the threats you face. The more interesting or valuable your platform or the market for it, the greater the interest will be in trying to compromise it. This reality may translate into large-scale efforts to break the security system. Ensure that security analysis and subsequent design receive a level of attention in proportion to the value of the information you are trying to protect. And don't underestimate the level of effort that an eventual attack may bring.
Plan for failure. This statement sounds defeatist, but it's not. If your system is valuable enough to attract a serious attack, your adversary may discover a vulnerability that enables a break for a period of time. Allowing for the possibility that you may need to repair and upgrade the security system over time is prudent planning. Designing in controlled amounts of flexibility to allow for changes that may need to be made later is a good future-proofing strategy, provided that it is carefully implemented. In retrospect, the misuse of a shallow signing key hierarchy that divulged the root signing key on the PS3 was a bad idea. Using it in a way that it could not be replaced was an even worse idea.
Know what you know, and know what you don't know. Many products use their security systems to protect valuable assets, which are generally unrelated to security. The PS3 is fundamentally a special-purpose multimedia entertainment system (and a very good one at that), which has been at the center of a much larger ecosystem of content and programming suppliers. The security system was supposed to protect that ecosystem, but an apparent lack of competence in its design and implementation left it vulnerable and ultimately surmounted. Designing security systems is a specialized undertaking, and many companies do not have the necessary in-house expertise. In such situations, it is well worth engaging a security specialist to help with this particular task. If the same care and thought had gone into the PS3's security system as went into the consumer features, the console likely would not have been breached so completely. Independent scrutiny and review by experts may have helped avoid this outcome. “
It is important, better yet essential; to take these bullet headers and apply them to any project you are involved in. From my experience my message has been bullet point #3, “plan for failure”. If you make it to the Synopsys session at DAC, you can hear more on this philosophy and strategy, in the context of the Hubble Space Telescope, along with some inspiring pictures from the universe.
Although I tend to concentrate on events in science, this came by this morning, from a coworker at ORA who retired some years back, Barry Broome. This website, assembled by the magazine Slate, gives a very nice, very detailed, and reportedly unaltered, report that compiles the growth of unemployment for each county in the US by month since 2006. While the results are discouraging, and I’m sure there are more than a few ways to interpret them, what is impressive is that the data can now be compiled so quickly and displayed so effectively.
It is very instructive to active the “play” button and see the map evolve. If you have 2 minutes, check it out.
Note if you launch from here, I found you have to click a few times to activate it. I tried copying in a static map to increase your curiosity, but, I’m afraid you’ll actually have to click on the link.
