Apple Maps begins blurring satellite views of NASA, Space Force and Air Force sites, Space Explored reports

Apple Maps appears to have started blurring its satellite imagery of a number of sensitive U.S. government sites, according to a report from Space Explored. Apple has not announced the change or explained it.

Seth Kurkowski of Space Explored says he identified the blurred locations by checking them himself. Among the NASA sites, the airfield at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia is blurred, although its launch pads are not, and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi is also affected. Two Space Force locations, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, are blurred as well.

The report also lists Air Force bases that host strategic bombers: Whiteman Air Force Base, home to the B-2, and Ellsworth Air Force Base, home to the B-1B. Groom Lake, widely known as Area 51, and Los Alamos National Laboratory are on the list too. In the blurred views, aircraft on tarmacs and rockets on launch pads can no longer be made out.

The coverage is not consistent. Kurkowski says Kennedy Space Center, including launch pads LC-39A and LC-39B, remains unblurred, as do Dyess and Barksdale Air Force Bases. Barksdale hosts B-52 bombers. He also found Navy sites such as Pearl Harbor, Naval Station Norfolk and Naval Station Great Lakes unblurred, along with the Wisconsin Air National Guard bases he checked. According to the report, Google Maps has not blurred any of these locations.

Apple has given no reason for the change. The article suggests it could be a security measure, on the view that sensitive facilities should not be easy to inspect on consumer devices, but that is the author's interpretation rather than anything Apple has said.

Several questions remain open. It is not known how quickly the blurring will spread, whether it will be limited to sensitive facilities or extend to government sites more broadly, or how navigation inside blurred bases, including through CarPlay, will behave.

Cupertino News has not independently checked the individual locations. We will update this story if Apple comments.