A tweet from US President Donald #Trump may have compromised the secrets of America's satellite reconnaissance capabilities. According to experts who analyzed the tweet over the weekend. The US president posted a message about the Iranian space program on his personal Twitter account on Saturday, August 30. The message said: "The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic incident during the final preparations for the launch of Safir SLV at the launch of #Semnan from Site one in #Iran. I wish Iran the best of wishes and luck in determining what happened on Site One ".
Trump was referring to an apparent rocket launch failure on Friday, August 29 at the Semnan Space Center in northern Iran. The suspected rocket failure caused significant damage to the Semnan Site 1 launch pad, some of which appear to have burned out. It is thought to be the second such incident in Iran that has created great embarrassment for Tehran, which has been trying to put a new satellite into orbit for nearly a year.
Washington and other countries have criticized the Tehran space program, stating that it is a masked missile program that could potentially be used to launch a nuclear bomb.
Along with his written message, the President of the United States also tweeted an aerial photograph showing the damage to the Semnan space center. The photograph, which Trump appears to have taken from a printed document given to him by an American spy agency, offers "an unprecedented example of American spy satellites at work" and inadvertently reveals some of the "secret" US satellite capabilities. .
Experts say they were able to determine that the photograph was taken from a satellite, rather than a surveillance plane or unmanned drone. Some claim that they were even able to pinpoint the exact satellite used to take the photograph by analyzing the angle of the photograph. It is believed to have been taken from USA 224, which is one of America's top secret optical reconnaissance satellites.
More importantly, the US president's tweet may have provided Washington's opponents with an example of the power and accuracy of American reconnaissance satellites. Their exact surveillance capabilities are a closely known secret to specialists from the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, two of America's most secretive intelligence agencies. It has long been known that the images captured by American spy satellites far exceed the 25-inch resolution available for commercial satellite services. A number of experts have suggested that Trump's tweeted photograph shows a resolution that is "incredibly high" and must be "at least 10 centimeters, if not better."