April 14,2008: Commercial photo satellites are making intelligence analysis a popular sport. Recently, the precise location and layout of Iran's ballistic missile test facility was discovered using commercial satellite photos. In this case, the images came from the 2.5 ton QuickBird photo satellite. QuickBird went into orbit last September, and became available for commercial use this past January. This is a half meter (20 inch) resolution satellite. The first QuickBird to go up, in 2001, had .6 meter (24 inch) resolution (for black and white, color stuff tends to be two meter, or greater, resolution.)

Using Google Earth images of North Korean missile facilities, for comparison, it's pretty obvious that the Iranian missile center was built with North Korean help. Iran gets a lot of its missile technology from North Korea. Iran is currently developing a multi-stage, solid fuel ballistic missile with a range of 4-6,000 kilometers. This would enable Iran to threaten all of Europe.