New Groom Lake imagery on Google Earth; Dated 8/22/2011

Yee Haw!

New imagery is date 8/22/2011. It seems to be a small swath, about 10x6 miles, just to cover the base itself. Kind of like it was made to order.

The construction materials here seem to have changed:
37°14'48.22"N 115°48'33.56"W

The new water tower could be here, though my latest panorama was done in October.
www.lazygranch.com...

This is the link for the really good pano, though older:
www.lazygranch.com...

New construction material near the RCS facility at
37°14'50.88"N 115°48'57.83"W

the links don't seem to work because it says the images have errors

reply to post by AtlantisX99


Would like to see the images, but I can't stop looking at your avatar! Sweet. . .

reply to post by amongus




thanks, it is kinda creepy

New building at 37°14'18.73"N 115°48'48.98"W

reply to post by AtlantisX99


You need to do a "save as". The images are so large they crash/confuse the browser. You probably need irfanview to see them. Or any photo editor.

This page has all my panoramas, some at reduced size.
www.lazygranch.com...

Here are the remaining changes I found:

New building 37°14'14.66"N 115°48'59.08"W

New lines leading to hangar 18 37°14'11.24"N 115°48'50.17"W

New concrete pad south of hangar 18 37°14'6.45"N 115°48'48.80"W

Bombing target cleaned up 37°16'35.02"N 115°45'18.22"W

There are some new paved roads. A few power lines here or there have been moved. No unexpected aircraft seen. Then again, the base knows when the satellite will be overhead, so I wouldn't expect anything secret to show up.

The new imagery doesn't make it to Tikaboo, so the spy cam can't be seen. I think it would be a blip at this resolution.

There are some minor changes to the roof of hangar 18. Whatever is on the roof has been there for a while based on old photographs, but the imagery is a little better. It could be solar cells for all I know.

The new water tower isn't in the new Google Earth imagery, but you can see the footers for it at
37°14'34.95"N 115°49'16.73"W

So It looks like the new construction near the RCS area is the only thing of significance.

Incidentally, I can load that panorama with Internet Explorer. But you might as well just save a copy on your hard drive. I don't play any of those right click blocking games. You can download whatever you want from my website. It is uploading my imagery to other websites that I don't appreciate.

Additional changes between 06/01/2010 and 08/22/2011 imagery:

New Shelter
37°14'14.54"N 115°48'59.14"W

New Construction
37°14'41.96"N 115°48'39.13"W

New Pavement for Ramp
37°14'6.37"N 115°48'48.86"W

Perhaps restating the obvious, when you review the imagery changes, it's clear there's activity to improve the base in recent years.

reply to post by TAGBOARD


Wait, are you saying Area 51 hasn't been moved to Dugway. ;-)

They are putting in a run of power lines to the base from the east side, but I haven't seen any activity. I did see a sign by the Alamo Canyon Road with notation for a "project", so I guess the new power lines haven't made it very far. The FCC database also lists an itinerant frequency for the contractors.

Regarding the water tower, there is probably some rule about gallons of water needed on hand for X amount of square footage of buildings, or maybe number of employees, etc. At some point, as you expand the base, you need more of the mundane stuff like water, electricity, sewage, etc. The new building near the Janet 737 could be an expanded passenger terminal, again to handle the expansion.

No activity near S-4. Oh wait, it's all underground. Never mind. ;-)

reply to post by TAGBOARD


For New Construction
37°14'41.96"N 115°48'39.13"W

you can see a pile of dirt in the October panorama. The good news then is whatever they build there will be visible from Tikaboo.