A new study using advanced sensing technology has taken a fresh look at the damaged Iranian nuclear site, Fordow. It is not the first time that satellite technology has revealed important strategic security information.
Landsat
The Landsat system was launched in July, 1972, initially called the Earth Resources Technology Satellite. It would be rebadged as Landsat 1. Landsat is the longest-running satellite system in the world, with the most recent Landsat (Landsat 9) launched in 2021.
I have a Landsat image given to me by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is an image of the island of Taiwan. It was presented to me at a dinner at the Great Hall of the People in 1986. I was in China, reluctantly, in that year to participate in dedicating a Landsat ground receiving station (located about half an hour car ride north of Beijing) and an analysis and interpretation center, located in Beijing.
Landsat is a multispectral imaging satellite. It included a camera made, then, by RCA and a multispectral scanner, made by Hughes. Landsat can track changes on the earth, including forecasting crop harvests or revealing damage from storms, earthquakes, floods and other changes on the earth’s surface. Supposedly Landsat was not for any military use. Officials thought that its weak image resolution, of around 30 meters, precluded using Landsat to track military developments.
Multispectral (MSS) means that detailed information across multiple, specific wavelength bands of the electromagnetic spectrum—beyond visible light, into ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR)—that can reveal characteristics invisible to the human eye.
At the dinner, my hosts also gave me a “present” for then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. It was a framed photo showing the area of the USSR bordering China. The image clearly revealed the location of Soviet nuclear-armed missile bases aimed at China.
In 1986, the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) used Landsat imagery to begin its first study of military bases in the former Soviet Union. The focus was on the Kola peninsula, which has become even more sensitive after Finland and Sweden joined NATO. The Russians are enlarging their military presence on the Kola Peninsula, egged on by Ukrainian drone attacks on a Russian airbase there.
The 1986 Norwegian study, led by Johnny Skorve and Tomas Ries identified Soviet missile installations, nuclear test sites and military bases, all using Landsat. The public, maybe even the government, was not aware of many of these installations.
Global Hyperspectral Observation Satellite System (GHOSt)
Multispectral earth observation has evolved significantly since 2021. Orbital Sidekick (OSK) Inc., a startup company in San Francisco deployed its Global Hyperspectral Observation Satellite constellation known as GHOSt. The hyperspectral imaging (HSI) constellation consists of six 100 kg ESPA [EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) Secondary Payload Adapter] class microsatellites, designed and manufactured by Astro Digital, with Maverick Space Systems providing mission integration & management services for the launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The custom hyperspectral imaging payload is provided by OSK. The GHOSt system provides its customers with capabilities including assessing the “protein content and evapotranspiration levels for crops, corrosion identification and leak detection for monitoring pipelines, accurate mineral surveying, environmental monitoring for various applications, and real-time road/rail infrastructure conditions.”
For defense applications, GHOSt’s hyperspectral sensors “can capture critical environmental and situational awareness information for use in national defense and crisis response efforts, including plume, camouflage, chemical weapon signatures, and target detection. The United States Department of the Air Force’s commercial investment group, in conjunction with the Space and Missile Systems Center, and the Air Force Research Laboratory, contracted with OSK to accelerate the deployment of these services.”
How GHOSt was used for FORDOW
OSK analysts employed HSI from the GHOSt constellation to evaluate the effects of “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a U.S. military strike on the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant in Iran on June 22, 2025.
Fordow is officially known as the Shahid Ali Mohammadi Nuclear Facility. It is located near the Iranian city of Qom. It is deep inside a mountain at a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base, making it highly protected from conventional airstrikes. Construction began around 2006, but its existence was only revealed by Iran in 2009 after Western intelligence services discovered the site. Fordow was used for high levels of enrichment, including up to 60%, and inspectors have found traces of uranium enriched to 83.7% purity—very close to the 90% needed for a nuclear weapon. The facility was designed to hold up to 2,976 centrifuges, which are housed in two enrichment halls. This is a small fraction of the capacity of the Iranian Natanz facility, which can hold approximately 50,000 centrifuges, but it appears the role is only to take already partially enriched uranium and refine it further.
On June 22, 2025, the U.S. reportedly attacked Natanz as part of “Operation Midnight Hammer,” using GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs, which are designed to penetrate hardened underground facilities. Satellite imagery and intelligence assessments suggest that these recent physical strikes caused “extremely severe damage and destruction” to the facility, including the underground enrichment halls, which are likely destroyed or severely damaged.
Regarding Fordow, U.S. officials have offered a range of assessments, with some claiming the facility was “totally obliterated” while others have stated that the strikes did not collapse the underground buildings and only set back Iran’s program by a few months. Conversely, some intelligence assessments suggest the strikes may have set back the program by up to two years. Israel has claimed that the strikes inflicted “very serious damage.” An early DIA assessment, leaked to the press and to Capitol Hill, said that the U.S. strikes did not “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program but instead set it back by only a few months.
Orbital Sidekick (OSK), using the GHOSt satellites and its in-house analytical tools, sought to determine what happened at Fordow.
Fordow was hit by B-2 Spirit stealth bombers carrying GBU-57 “Bunker Buster” bombs, each weighing 30,000 lbs. (14,000 kg). Twelve bombers attacked in two waves, targeting Fordow’s two ventilator shafts. The first six bombs were aimed at destroying the hard concrete tops of the shafts, followed by another round of bombs designed to penetrate deep underground. The GBU-57 is a Massive Ordnance Penetrator and has highly precise guidance. There is no controversy that the GBU’s struck the target and hit the ventilation shafts.
The OSK effort was to determine based on the damage that can be observed to see if any conclusions could be reached on the outcome of the strike. OSK called the exercise “Fingerprinting the Invisible.”
OSK used hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and used the results to apply what it calls Principal Component Analysis (PCA). “PCA is an unsupervised dimensionality reduction technique that is particularly valuable for HSI data. It streamlines processing for subsequent steps like material classification or anomaly detection, enhances the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by isolating noise in lower principal component bands, and improves visualization by highlighting and differentiating scene characteristics more effectively than raw data.”
The OSK analysis was able to identify three types (out of four possible) of concrete used in the underground Fordow complex, but which were pushed to the surface by the multiple blasts. The imaging also identified subsidence at the site, in an area of approximately 315 meters by 275 meters, suggesting that underground halls and centrifuge complexes had collapsed.
The OSK work should go far in confirming that the Fordow site was heavily damaged, possibly even totally destroyed.
Much progress has been made with new, advanced sensors, data libraries (that can specify the signatures, for example, of different kinds of concrete), and imaging technology since Landsat. Such sensors and analytics tied to AI engines will, in future, reshape the nature of warfare by confirming results on the battlefield and in critical infrastructure of strikes.
Take note, however, that the OSK technology and others linked to it are commercial operations, meaning that one can expect potential adversaries using the same satellites and similar techniques in future.
Source: author’s blog
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