The politics of this were, and remain, a compromise between the two predominant neoliberal concerns of national security and capital. In 1992, 32 years after the first classified US reconnaissance satellite was placed in orbit, the US Land Remote Sensing Policy Act made it legal for commercial satellite imagery vendors to sell to civilian entities. Was it a physical component of the satellite itself that prevented it from taking a photo? A direct order from the federal government to the satellite company that we could FOIA? Or something quieter, harder to track? So we began to research the history of commercial satellite imaging. We were interested in the mechanism used in the censorship. We immediately assumed censorship at a federal level and began to wonder what, exactly, made this patch of Tonopah different.

There are many such experimental weapons testing facilities around the US, but, strangely, none of the others have had such a long stretch of time without an update. Many such dry lake beds on the site were historically used for aerial target practice. Since the early 1950s, the Nellis Range has been the site of extensive government aerospace and weapons testing. Tonopah is a subsection of the Nellis Test and Training Range, which is jointly operated by the Department of Energy and Air Force. This is Google’s Earth, not ours.Īs we learned more about commercial satellite imagery, experimental military test sites, and the mechanics of Google Earth, we realized the only way to answer these questions was to find and purchase a satellite image of the “Tonopah Gap” ourselves. That this gap occurred for eight years without any acknowledgement from Google, Alphabet, or the federal government suggests that it can happen again with no warning or oversight. (Since we began our investigation, Google Earth updated its historical dataset to include images from both 20, making the total gap remaining 6 years.)

While the area has since been updated (the current image you see in Google Earth/Maps was taken on October 1st, 2017), the gap in Google Earth’s historical data set remains. After stumbling onto this strange piece of information, we, as researchers critical of the National Security State wanted to know how and why this happened.

Google earth satellite