. @ctbto_alerts confirms that 4 IMS stations are offline in Russia.
RUP61; Dubna: the last message received in the International Data Centre (IDC) was 2019/08/10 03:16:59 (IDC received time UTC)
RUP54; Kirov: the last message received in IDC was 2019/08/10 06:19:31 UTC
@ctbto_alerts The other two stations went offline on August 13th.
@ctbto_alerts All four outages came just days after an accident that may have involved the nuclear-powered SSC-X-9 Skyfall missile. Five ROSATOM employees were confirmed dead in that incident. It happened on August 8. The stations are CTBTO funded, but operated by local Russian institutions.
RN56 Peleduy: Down on 2019/08/13. Back online, backfilling data.
RN57 Bilibino: Down on 2019/08/13. Back online, backfilling data.
In total, 5 out of 7 operational radionuclide stations in Russia have experienced problems since the accident....
@ctbto_alerts The only ones that haven't (by my count) are RN60 Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and RN58 Ussuriysk, both of which are in the Russian far east near the North Korean border.
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So first off, where did this came come from? As far as I can tell, it was Radio Svoboda (Radio Liberty's Russian Service, I think?). They posted it on their Telegram channel earlier today and did a brief write-up here:
There's not a lot of detail about either the image or the analysis. But the original image came from @planet and was taken at 10:51 AM (07:51 GMT) on 5 July.
Here it is, and sure enough there are the white things on the roof....
NEW: @TBowmanNPR has confirmed with a "U.S. Official" that an American surveillance satellite saw an explosion at the Kakhovka dam.
The official said that the image did not indicate who was responsible or whether the blast occurred above or below water.
Although the official did not confirm the exact system used, I think that a SBIRS sat is most likely.
SBIRS stands for the Space-Based Infrared System. It is a vital part of the U.S. early-warning network designed to watch for a ICBM missile launch anywhere on earth.
SBIRS has two parts:
"SBIRS High" -- a constellation of geostationary satellites that watch the entire globe all at once.
"SBIRS Low" -- a group of lower-orbiting satellites that provide higher resolution imagery.
The exact capabilities of these sats remain classified but...
The Kakhovka Dam appears to be gone. This is going to have far-reaching consequences for weeks and months to come.
Here are some very early thoughts. (video via Ukrhydroenergo Telegram)🧵
First, a little background on what had been going on. Water levels plummeted in February and then surged in May to record highs.
I think this is because Russia was not managing the dam. They left some sluice gates open on their side, which caused water levels to drop at the start of winter...
But after the spring rains, the gates weren't letting enough water through...