Military ground camera and shuttle photo

[Walloon]

NASA confirmed today that the agency has received photos taken by a powerful military ground camera of the disintegrating space shuttle Columbia as it streaked across the western United States.

Mike Kostelnik, a deputy associate NASA administrator, refused to identify where the ground camera was located, but he said it did take pictures at the time Columbia was experiencing a breakup of the left wing.

Can anybody guess why they refused to identify where the camera was that took the picture? Not, say the name of the cameraman or the type of camera, but even the general location?

Kostelnik also said that ground searchers had recovered a large piece of one of Columbia’s wings that includes the wing’s leading edge.

“It is not clear which wing this is,” he said. “Obviously the structure is very important.”

If the large piece included the wing’s leading edge, shouldn’t it be obvious if it was the left or right wing?

[bernse]

Hmm. From: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030207/ap_on_sc/shuttle_investigation_135

Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, said high-resolution images were taken by military cameras in Hawaii and New Mexico.

I’d be curious to see the pics, but I wouldn’t be suprised one bit if they remain classified.

[Whack-a-Mole]

*Originally posted by Walloon *
Not, say the name of the cameraman or the type of camera, but even the general location?

I would be fairly certain that any camera that could resolve the shuttle’s wing some 200,000+ feet away isn’t a standard camera you can get at your local photo shop. Not to mention that at zoom magnifications fo that caliber the camera can’t be handheld and expected to work (i.e. no cameraman per se unless you count a guy in some control room pushing buttons). A lense sufficient to zoom in that well probably isn’t even man-portable.

[World_Eater]

I would put my money on the Kwajalein Atoll, they seem to have all sorts of high tech goodies there.

[squid]

I read they were taken by military cameras in New Mexico and in Hawaii.

[AndrewL]

Here’s the photo in question:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030207avweek/

[bonzer]

*Originally posted by Walloon *
If the large piece included the wing’s leading edge, shouldn’t it be obvious if it was the left or right wing?

At this stage, that’s jumping to a conclusion. We don’t yet know that the leading edge is the problem and Nasa certainly aren’t assuming that it is. The new photo is very interesting, as is the accompanying Aviation Week story. But it’s only one piece of evidence.
Even if the photo shows what it appears to, the wing is likely to have failed at this point leaving a piece of debris that needn’t necessarily plainly show this failure along its remaining lead edge. The bigger surprise, though it’s no doubt merely a reflection of caution on Kostelnik’s part, is that they can’t yet tell which wing it is merely from the shape. But you should be able to tell that from most parts of the wing, not just the leading edge.