meier@Software.Mitel.COM (Rolf Meier) (12/21/90)
In article <1585@ksr.com> clj@ksr.com (Chris Jones) writes: >It was stated at that time that the shuttle was not correctly oriented to allow >its belly to be photographed from the ground. I have heard, but obviously have >no way of knowing, that the shuttle was photographed from another satellite. This is also what I recall. A simple calculation shows that photographing (or I should say resolving) an object the size of a shuttle tile from a hundred miles away would be quite a feat. But, as you say, mere civilians have no way of knowing how (or if) it was actually done. The June, 1990 issue of "Lasers and Optronics" contains an article entitled "Stalking Satellites in High Resolution". The article states that the resolution for a satellite at a distance of 1000 km is about 5 m, without image processing. (I guess that would be about .5 m at a distance of 100 km). The hope is that this can be improved to 10 cm with image processing (1 cm at a distance of 100 km). Perhaps this has already been achieved. ______________________________________________________________________ Rolf Meier Mitel Corporation "Everything You Know Is Wrong"