Cooper's treasure (metal detection from space!?)

[nctnico]

No this is not about DB Cooper's airplane hijacking but looking for any progress on this case put me on track of a new TV docudramentary currenty running on Discovery. The story pivots around the astronaut Gordon Cooper who flew the Mercury 9 space craft 22 orbits around earth. According to the story Cooper had a secret instrument on board to look for Soviet (nuclear) installations but he also used it to map ship wrecks from the golden age (appearantly) based on metal parts from those ships. It seems rather far fetched to me that they can do something from space which can't be done from a ship or airplane but it maybe an interesting subject for a discussion.

[Rick Law]

Space has a much wider field of view.  Perhaps it is the contrast between the target and the surrounding that allows the detection.  Since it is a secret instrument, we wont know until more information is disclosed.

[MadTux]

Probably bullshit. Discovery isn't exactly credible/trustworthy and anytime something is secret, my bullshit/conspiracy alarm starts.
And those Mercury flights were in the 1960, so the electronic was primitive back then, so It's very doubtful anything better has been invented/used since. And they are supposed to be looking for a few tons of gold or what, yet they didn't manage to find e.g. the titanic, which was discovered in 1985? Radar is hopeless here, since it's quickly absorbed by water.
Would be more something like magnetic anomaly or gravity mapping, or muon radiography (https://indico.cern.ch/event/197799/contributions/371923/attachments/291921/408034/spacepart12-3.pdf)

[nctnico]

Judging from from the maps and areas they have showed these shipwrecks are all in shallow water. Appearantly shallow enough to dive without needing specialist gear (up to 30 meters deep?).

[SeanB]

Shallow water wrecks are easy to see from space with a big enough block of Nikon's finest zoom glass, and the best of Kodak's space rated films, simply by looking for the telltale ship sized reefs in the clear water at noon. Less vibration than in an aircraft, and a slower motion across the area. however, a local magnemometer survey across these locations is needed to find the telltale signature of iron cannons lying on the sea floor, and this really needs to be done from under the surface, and with a wooden ship towing the sled. At least that satellite imagery can reduce the area you need to scan from " a whole lot of blue water" to "just these bits of water with a shadow on the sand", which saves a lot of time.

[KD0CAC John]

I ran across some info in the mid 80's about using satellite survey's for resources [ metals , oil etc. ] even old river beds in deserts etc.
Funny thing is , not seeing anymore about it for some time .
So this does not seem off the wall .