https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...n-of-satellite-images-never-seems-to-improve/
"I’m fairly certain that, within the government realm, the
National Geospatial-intelligence Agency … probably has much higher resolution available to themselves,” Bianchetti said. The resolution that can be achieved is linked to the
physical dimensions of the mirror inside the satellite, which has a number of other implications, given that size and weight matter when deploying objects into orbit.
A request for more information from the NGA was not returned by the time this article was published, but it’s safe to say that the precision of U.S. spy satellites is a closely held secret. Details of the once-secret KH-11 satellite design became public when the National Reconnaissance Office donated two of its old devices to NASA in 2012. One estimate of the resolution of the successor to the KH-11 puts the possible resolution in the range of 10 centimeters-per-pixel. In our phone conversation, Bianchetti described having read about a satellite capable of achieving a 7 centimeter-per-pixel resolution.
