Three years ago, Donald Trump tweeted an image that left intelligence experts gobsmacked.

The picture was of a rocket that had exploded on a launch pad deep inside of Iran. It was so crisp, that some initially thought it may not have been taken by a satellite.

“This picture is so exquisite, and you see so much detail,” says Jeffrey Lewis, who studies satellite imagery at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. “At first, I thought it must have been taken by a drone or something.”

…

Now, three years after Trump’s tweet, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has formally declassified the original image. …