Groom Lake google earth update 7/12/2009

Clearly they upped the resolution. You can now see detail on the triangular tower that wasn't present before. You can see the emitters on the tower, something that only showed up on Tikaboo shots.

37.246280° -115.823448°

Looks like snow on the ground in places, so I don't know if the date is right. It might just look funny due to the time of day of the shot. Shadows are very short. The dirt pile in front of the hangar looks smaller,but probably due to the sun being overhead. The new hangar is finished . We've known it was finished for a while, but I mean it is now finished in the imagery.

Here is the new jogging track:
37.244828° -115.829622°

Looks like two "trees" showed up in this area:
37.235933° -115.812381°

New building here:
37.236730° -115.814619°
Well more like a quonset hut.

Four small towers appear here. Again, these have been seen in Tikaboo photos.
37.234443° -115.804241°

Wild life guzzler?
37.208948° -115.844134°

A dish is now visible here:
37.261691° -115.819551°

A 737 in flight, complete with shadow. Landings on 14 are not as common as on 32, and as far as I can tell, there is no ILS in this direction.

Tennis court?
37.242866° -115.818319°

New aircraft parking area:
37.246028° -115.812875°
37.266590° -115.810368°

The NTS and TTR don't appear to be updated.

Ahh I find it funny, one of the most top secret places in the world (not really) get's regularly updated on google earth and my town hasn't been updated in over 5 years!

Thanks for sharing.

It's pretty strange indeed.

Area51 receives updates, but Ducle doesn't. I was looking at it, and the date said 1997... that's more then 10 years old..

The bad thing is that the old image and the new one do not allign propperly. So you can't see what's updated..

I see Edwards and the Lancaster/Palmdale area got new imagery. The bad news is the quality is worse than the old imagery. I see a few more planes out near North Base. Some B1Bs near south base. There is some "weirdness" regarding the markings of the North Base runway.

I see two glider type aircraft near Plant 42.
34.638082° -118.083471°
About 130ft wingspan. The body is too small for a Global Hawk, but then again, the imagery is pretty poor. Maybe U2 with white wings?

The Hellendale facity has new imagery, but again, poorer quality than the old imagery. Same goes for the Tejon ranch facility.

Well at least the Groom quality was upgraded.

reply to post by Chadwickus


Sometimes Bing has better imagery for residential areas. Bing seems to be a waste of time for "secret areas", but useful to check for other areas.

Some of the really good imagery is from aircraft, not satellite.. The NTS is flown often by civilian photographic aircraft, though the data never seems to show up on the internet. People have caught the planes entering the airspace via scanner.

reply to post by gariac


Maybe they are mq-9 reapers. They are smaller than the global hawk.

Originally posted by gariac
The NTS and TTR don't appear to be updated.

Pretty big "swath" of a new image - about 50 miles east to west, about 10 miles north to south.
I've been scrolling around, to see what else they have updated. Maybe some of this has been updated for a while, but dated 7/9/2009 is a big chunk of NOTHING south, centered at 36°56'7.65"N, 115°48'27.53"W.

As well, the back/Rachel gate is 8/6/2009, but the "Tourist" gate is still 10/26/2006.

I really wish they would have updated TTR and Creech as well.

Other differences:

New "dishes"? - 37°14'52.68"N, 115°49'6.25"W
New quonset hut - 37°14'12.31"N, 115°48'52.61"W
Almost appears that something burned here - 37°14'0.30"N, 115°48'49.03"W

reply to post by FosterVS


I made a KMZ file surrounding the new areas, or perhaps what I perceive to be the new areas.

google earth KMZ file

The forum software tends to hide URLs, but if this link makes it through, you can just use it as a network link in google earth.

www.lazygranch.com...

In Firefox, you can right click and save the link location. Then in Google Earth do add->network_link. Paste the link in the appropriate box.

If not, you need to save the file in the first link to your hard drive then load it using the file->open command in Google Earth.

The new imagery gets a bit of site-4 (the Have Glib facility south of the TTR). It manages to just miss Bald Mountain. The old Rachel repeater site near Coyote Summit is covered. I'm sure Chuck Clark would be thrilled to know somebody thought that old gear was worth spying on.

There's a building here with a grayed-out circle on the top: 37°13'33.47"N 115°48'52.81"W

I'm zoomed in pretty good. Any ideas? Please don't tell me it's some type of indicator inside of Google Earth...hehe. Definitely looks like they're hiding something underneath...maybe a satellite dish or something.

Oh heck! Just saw the above post with the same coordinates. I'm sorry!

Sheesh...this post needs to be deleted. I see now when I zoom way in that the gray dot is some type of 3-D structure built in SketchUp I suppose. Duh.

Originally posted by glitchinthematrix
There's a building here with a grayed-out circle on the top: 37°13'33.47"N 115°48'52.81"W

I'm zoomed in pretty good. Any ideas? Please don't tell me it's some type of indicator inside of Google Earth...hehe. Definitely looks like they're hiding something underneath...maybe a satellite dish or something.

Oh heck! Just saw the above post with the same coordinates. I'm sorry!

Sheesh...this post needs to be deleted. I see now when I zoom way in that the gray dot is some type of 3-D structure built in SketchUp I suppose. Duh.

edit on 2-3-2011 by glitchinthematrix because: idiocy

edit on 2-3-2011 by glitchinthematrix because: (no reason given)

Yeah, what is this 3D building crap? I have never noticed it before. Someone did one of the new hangar, and got it totally wrong. Don't even have the doors on the right side(s) of the building.

I put a link to that 3D building a while ago. The Google Earth community has no leader. Stuff gets put up there, right or wrong. Even if you track down the person that put up the link and get them to admit their data is wrong, it is not assured they will take down their data. The locations of nuclear tests on the NTS is a prime example.

The coordinates
37°13'33.47"N 115°48'52.81"W
just look like a tank to me. You can see in 2002 the ring for the tank was there. The Google Earth community thought it was a missile launcher. Doing image analysis on tanks can lead to all sorts of impossible to substantiate conclusions. Does the new tank indicate a new type of fuel? Well, maybe. Or maybe they need more fuel and just added another tank.

N37 36 33.1 W115 41 27.8
is in free territory. I put it here only to show the arm chair Google Earth "observers" that satellite imagery isn't everything. The dark spot is a junker truck. I have photos of it somewhere, though not linked on my website. It seems to be related to the mine on Tempiute.

I forgot to mention you can see the triangular tower move as you go through the history. You always have to use a little caution when detecting movement of tall structures since satellite images are orthorectified prior to being put on Google Earth. The BREN tower on the NTS looks mighty weird after warping. Incidentally, on a clear day, you can see the BREN tower from the Tonopah Test Range. It just peaks over the hills.

This is the hill where most people photograph the Red Flag exercises.
37.566611° -115.669861°

You start the climb either here
37.566478° -115.671156°
or
37.566113° -115.671716°

You can drive as far as
37.569605° -115.671449°
though I just leave the truck in the parking area at
37.571015° -115.670802°

You can see the trail (actually a wash) that gets you close to the hill.

Bald Mountain can't see your car in the lot, though they can see you on the hill. Sometimes the game warden stops by to see if you are hunting. Other times the contractors set up their Roland right next to your car and blast it with RF. I do suggest locking your doors if you do the hike. Occasionally your remote door lock won't work since they use the military air band. Don't panic. Just get really close to the car or actually use the key.

This is the mock missile site used as a target on Range 61.
37.158404° -115.429748°
You can see it from Tikaboo Peak. They shoot it up with the AC130. It is quite a site to watch at night since they use an IR tracer that still has plenty of red visible light. It looks like they are shooting a laser beam.

Looks like a shack of sorts here, though it could be a wildlife guzzler. However, it has two vehicles next to it.
37.159072° -115.369738°

This is roughly the Range 61 gate.
N37 17 21.4 W115 35 27.7
The camera is on this hill
37.288555° -115.588897°

As you can see, it is quite possible to sneak around so that you can't be seen by the camera, but the camo dudes will be out there anyway since there is a sensor along the road.

This is in the old imagery, but it helps to indicate where the forbidden territory is located.

Another shack in the middle of nowhere:
37.246991° -115.712526°

For some reason the google earth "community" waypoint to the Power Line Overlook was removed. Maybe the BLM asked to have it removed due to the erosion caused by all the cars driving to it.

37°27'32.23"N 115°25'25.88"W