Sneaky Satellite Photos Available Online

Delboy writes "Here's an article from BBC News about a company called Space Imaging which will point their satellite at an area of the planet that you request, take a 1 metre resolution picture and then e-mail it to you the next day, check out this link to read more."

Comments

Sattelite Images

[ZuG]

There are free images available at... hold on.. terraserver.microsoft.com. They are free, and they actually have decent images for the areas that they have covered. The resolution isn't nearly as high as that of this one, but for free I guess you can't complain =)

Most of the eastern US, I believe is available. Last time I checked, at least.

Okay, I'll spend the money...

[Accipiter]

But Space Imaging, the company that operates Ikonos, will point the satellite at an area you request and have the image e-mailed to you within a day.

Great! I'd like shots of the following locations, as well as their surrounding areas:

115-49'00"W 37-14'00"N
115-44'00"W 37-38'30"N
115-51'30"W 37-7'30"N
115-47'30"W 37-16'30"N

(For the curioius, those Latitude/Longiude numbers are in the vicinity of Nellis Air Force base, the area of Rachel Nevada, Groom Lake, and surrounding parts.)

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Area 51

[Crixus]

So will they point that sattelite and get pics of that little airforce base 100 miles north of Las Vegas for me?

Actually, about 2 years ago when I was reading the sci.space.* newsgroups regularly there was a reference to a french satellite that was taking pictures (resolution not as good however) and keeping them in a database. They had a web page and you could punch in some coordinates and it would pull up the most recent photo in its database of that area.

Someone did type in the Area 51 coordinates and when the photo came up you could see a runway. Not much else though due to poorer resolution.

I just checked some of my old bookmarks and I couldn't find the link. I'll look some more later.

Uses & implications (personal and geopolitical)

[Dr. Zowie]

The sample images are very impressive. It's terrific to see that yet another space age technology is available for everyone.

The commercial availability of these kinds of imaging changes so many things. A few off the top of my head:

• Friends disappeared on a camping trip in the Grand Tetons? Ask Ikonos to photograph the area and find them -- provided they're smart enough to make "obvious" signs in the snow.
• Environmental groups have a chance to spot illegal construction in places to which they have no legal access.
• Virtual tourism -- the images are still a bit expensive for random snapshots(!), but what if (for example) space images of Tiannanmen Square had been available on the internet? Talk about a slashdotted site...
• Virtually everybody can spy on world events. Ever wonder what's really going on in Afghanistan?

This last aspect will give world governments more accountability about geopolitical "hot spots". When Joe Sixpack (or, at least, Joe Wealthy Sixpack or Earth First! or Greenpeace or International Amnesty) can produce images better than the ones that caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, it will become very hard for dishonest governments (such as our own!) to get away with certain kinds of lies. Of course, the illuminati aren't particularly stupid and will undoubtedly try to regulate or outlaw this stuff.

In that light, the ``snapper'' of the BBC article is intriguing -- apparently the U.S. government has already outlawed certain kinds of spaceborne photography of Israel? Sheesh, you'd think people would eventually figure out that you can't put the genie back in the bottle. (You turn your back on congress for one session...)

Re:Well, ...

[Lunatic]

So all we need to do is fly it higher and match the rotation speed of the earth, thereby making the earth seem to be still from the satellite's perspective.

Unfortunately, this involves a HUGE tradeoff in resolution at the current state of technology.

The Ikonos satellite data (see here) shows that it orbits at an altitude of 681 kilometers / 423 miles. Why so close? Because the closer to the earth, the higher the resolution of the picture, all things being equal.

If you look here, you'll find a quick rundown of orbital types -- of interest is Geostationary Orbit (GEO), which is what would be necessary to accomplish what you want. However, its altitude is 35786 km / 22228 mi. So, if they were to push the satellite to a higher orbit (which is also much more expensive to do, and required a much bigger launch vehicle and other things I'm probably overlooking), the resolution would be 53^2 (2809) times poorer, again all things being equal. This would make a 1m resolution picture into a 53m resolution picture. Not likely to catch you sunbathing in the back yard.

They would have to increase their optical system by over 3 orders of magnitude to do as you suggest.

I'm no expert, and I have probably overlooked many things. However, this is a quick summary of why it's not as easy to do as it sounds.


-Lunatic

Here is a High-Res Image...

[Amoeba Protozoa]

...to show you what this thing is really capable of!

http://ww w.spaceimaging.com/gallery/ioweek/archive/iow11229 9/mile1024.gif

Enjoy!

-AP

Re:Area 51, I found the URL

[Crixus]

OK, in my first message here I talked about a French web site with a catalog of satellite photos of the earth.

After searching far and wide (I even checked on floppies) I found the URL. I don't know if it will work for you, because friends have told me that they occasionally get locked out being asked for a password, but here it is:

It's called DALI.

Use it, but don't abuse it. :-)

If it gets slashdotted they'll probably cut us off.

More actual uses.

[hey!]

We did a county wide project in the midwest a few years ago to lay parcel maps on aerial photos with very high resolution; you can tell which people have pools or decks which aren't listed in the assesor's database.

By overlaying the national wetlands inventory or corresponding state GIS information on top of a aerial or sattelite photo, you can easily tell who has been building in a wetland.

We're working with an agency in CA to map rice fields for purposes of mosquito control. Normally vegetation and crop identification requires infrared, however with rice you can use black and white photography when the rice field is flooded. A few thousand dollars of sat imagery will save them many times the labor costs in surveying.

For most users the advantage of this kind of imagery is lower cost vs conventional survey or aerial photography. For some applications that you mention (photos of war zones) you simply can't get the information any other way.