Signal
Satellite: The view from orbit
Signal of the Twelve-Day War, June 2025
Commercial imagery from Maxar and Planet Labs showed six bunker-buster impact holes clustered over two ventilation shafts at Fordow, backfilled tunnel entrances, and pre-strike truck convoys, corroborating the US account of how the weapons were aimed. Beyond optical imagery, NASA thermal sensors caught a pre-bombing heat anomaly near Fordow, and hyperspectral satellites detected ground subsidence consistent with a hall collapse. Satellites became the independent referee in a dispute governments could not settle.
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- The question
- What did commercial and scientific satellites reveal about the damage that governments disputed?
- Six impact holes over two shafts at Fordow
- Maxar imagery from 22 June showed six penetration holes in two clusters of three along the ridge over Fordow's underground hall, matching the two targeted ventilation shafts.
- The imagery matched the US account
- Gen. Dan Caine described 12 bombs walked into two shafts: the first removed the concrete cap, weapons two through five entered the shaft at over 1,000 feet per second and detonated inside, and a sixth was a backup. The surface crater pattern corroborated it.
- Trucks and sealed tunnels before the strike
- Maxar imagery from 19-20 June showed about 16 cargo trucks at Fordow's tunnel entrance and bulldozers sealing entrances, which analysts read as intentional pre-strike backfilling.
- A thermal anomaly, caught the night before
- NASA's VIIRS thermal sensor flagged an infrared anomaly about 3 km north of Fordow on the night of 21 June, estimated at about 1,200 K and 2 MW of radiative output, a pre-bombing event visible only from orbit.
- Hyperspectral satellites saw the ground sink
- Orbital Sidekick's hyperspectral constellation detected subsidence over an area about 315 by 275 m at Fordow, and concrete pushed to the surface, suggesting underground halls collapsed.
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