ISS live cam feed - what is this thing?

reply to post by imasecretspy

Except the NPOESS isn't expected to launch till 2014 ...

NASA Science Missions

It does have some interesting characteristics, though. Notice the wing shaped panel on the left. Tthere's also a smaller white rectangular shape on it's right, another white square box on the lower bottom right and a dark squarish shape in the lower left of the blue rectangle. There's also one more thing but I won't mention until someone else does.

And yes, LightAssassin, you're right. It did stay stationary relative to the ground.

I don't know folks. I'm still confuzzed.

I'm alomost certain what you saw was Hulun Lake. The ISS was very near it at the time you indicate. Take a look at it here:



Now if we rotate it and skew it to simulate the view you'd get from the ISS:





Pretty close, in shape. Keep in mind, the exact shape of the lake will change with water level.

reply to post by mysticcuisinart


Yea apparently they didn't get the funding to launch it.
Still it does look similar to whatever is in that image though...

Originally posted by nataylor
Pretty close, in shape. Keep in mind, the exact shape of the lake will change with water level.

Close, but not quite. The part that doesn't seem to match is the part that doesn't look like water:
-The white triangle to the left
-The white square below
-The white rectangle to the right
-The dark colored part inside
Any thoughts on those?

Originally posted by mysticcuisinart
Notice the wing shaped panel on the left. Tthere's also a smaller white rectangular shape on it's right, another white square box on the lower bottom right and a dark squarish shape in the lower left of the blue rectangle.

Exactly. I'm not sure how a lake accounts for those.

reply to post by nataylor


Have you considered Evaporation Ponds, perhaps associated with mining activities, as already suggested above?

Oh, and again, a collection seen from orbit.


(Along with some clunker images, thrown in....guess the vagaries of Google Image Search?)...

Looks like some sort of massive solar array.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8e64778bbdfb.jpg[/atsimg]

The picture above isn't from Kazakhstan, I just use it as an example. But there does seem to be large solar arrays in Kazakhstan

centralasianewswire.com...
www.sunepi.org...

Of coarse I can't be sure thats what the object is, i'm just throwing the idea out there.

ALS

FOUND IT!!



Click here for map.

It's situated at the top end of a dry lake bed in the Xinjiang region between Kumul and Hotan in northwest China and measures over 12 miles long by 6 miles wide. Not surprising then it can be seen from space.

Thanks weedwhacker! It definitely looks like an evaporation pond.

reply to post by mysticcuisinart


Yes I'm pretty sure that's it, you found it a few minutes before I did but since I already uploaded the picture too I'll go ahead and post it:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1144e9682a21.jpg[/atsimg]It does look like a series of evaporation ponds.

The triangle shape doesn't match but it looks like that's variable snow cover so that would explain it I think, and the rest is too perfect a match to not be it.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I agree. Especially since we don't know when the satellite image was taken.
Thanks Arbitrageur!

Hiya, can I ask what website you guys are looking at for the live ISS feed - there seems to be loads of different websites?

reply to post by blackcat99

Here's the NASA link. You can also watch it live over on USTREAM.

Thanks very much!

Originally posted by mysticcuisinart
It definitely looks like an evaporation pond.

I think I found a matching location on a China resources map. I added an arrow to the triangle I think matches the location.

I have a friend who reads Chinese but even the original is too fuzzy to read the index so I don't know what it says in English, but it's the 9th mineral or resource down in the legend:

Mineral of China
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b3de7606278b.png[/atsimg]
If someone could read that we might know what kind of resource they are using the evaporation ponds for, but we would probably need a clearer version of the map since that legend is too fuzzy.

It's a salt field and former nuclear test site according to Earth Snapshot.

Originally posted by LightAssassin
It's the object on the ground he's asking the question about. Given that this photo was taken from space that object must be a MASSIVE structure. Dont bother looking for it on Google earth because it'd be obscured from view from TPTB

Google Maps

Soooo... You were saying?

Originally posted by mysticcuisinart
It's a salt field and former nuclear test site according to Earth Snapshot.

So they are refining salt from a former nuclear test site?

Let's hope the salt isn't too radioactive!

Something crawling on ISS? Posted today 12/14/2012 interesting. Beats me what it is. Maybe reflection of sun?

reply to post by RUFFREADY


Just looks like a reflection of sunlight to me. Perhaps off one of the curved modules. That's a canadaarm Power Data Grapple fixture in the foreground I think so there's only a limited number of positions.

Why is it whenever people produce these videos they never cite the source. I'm sure as hell not looking through a bunch of ISS footage to find which grapple fixture it's on!

Great find, and it's cool how people found the answer to it really quickly. I immediately thought "evaporation pans" when I saw the pics. Reminds me of the Dead Sea evaporation pans, they're probably the biggest in the world: