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U.S. Allows Sale of Half-Meter Satellite Photos
kreinsch writes "According to an article in today's Washington Post, the U.S. Government quietly granted a license to Space Imaging, Inc. two weeks ago to allow the sale of satellite photos with half-meter resolution, as compared to the current one-meter resolution available." As the article points out, this effectively ends the monopoly the spy agencies had on this high-end imagery.
No, that whole satellite imagery thing was just plain silly.
First off, the satellite is travelling at thousands of miles per hour (relative to the ground), so the shot where they couldn't see Brill's face, because they were directly overhead was stupid, stupid, stupid. None of it was even remotely possible.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Yes, I've heard of infared, I've also heard that IR is reflected by clouds.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
By taking mutiple, slightly offset immages of the same area you can increase the resolution by averaging overlapped values at particular positions.
The actual algo is a bit more complicated but I don't remember it off hand.
The problem is I think the process scales at n^2 so you need alot of processing and alot of pictures to really boost the resolution.
But it is pretty easy to increase the resolution by a couple of factors.
It was trivial to figure out which way the winds were blowing & to contact researchers further upwind. It was fairly quickly realized that the source was in Eastern Europe & confirmed when a quick sat check of the nuke plant's thermal signature confirmed Chernobyl was running waaay hot.
However none of this required any high-resolution photography, nor was it even visible-wavelength. Instead a fairly coarse IR shot was taken and compared with a recent one. A hundred percent-plus jump in heat from the foot-ball sized containment structure told the story.
I dunno if the NATO folks were already aware but I suspect it wouldn't be hard to arrange automatic periodic monitoring of facilities with an flag raised when they suddenly change. While the obvious thing to watch would be armory's & such it wouldn't be terribly hard to add fuel-storage facilities, chemical plants, electricity generating stations, even reservoirs. Something changes temperature fast & you knew either a batallion of banks is rolling towards Germany or somewhere a dam has failed & there's now a large mudflat that was a lake yesterday...
-- Michael
ps Wonder if I could use the same tech to spot when a server goes down - some of the big-iron puts out a *lot* of heat...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
That's rich. You can bet that anytime the NSA, CIA, or DoD lets anybody see or use a technology, it's because it's out of date and has been replaced with something much more powerful.
The resolution doesn't have to be that good to differentiate adult males from adult females and children. There would be noticeable differences in height, proportions and mass.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You can only image to about half a wavelength.
SAR radar peaks at tens of centimeter wavelength.
This month's issue on Popular Science has such a picture for you.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So far one single corporation was granted access to sell the photos. This does not end a monopoly, but rather looks like it would be starting one (regardless of the fact that they may claim they'll license others in the future, right now there's still only one).
It's POSSIBLE that other countries have higher resolution stuff, BUT it can ONLY be one of a hand full. Remember, the club that can launch a satelite to orbit is kinda small.
Let's see:
Nasa and other US based companies (the one that launches of the 747)
France
Russia
China
Japan
Did I leave anyone out?
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
OK, They have been selling one meter images for a couple of years, and now have the OK to sell half meter. New sat? Or has the old one been capabile of 1/2 meter all along, and we've been getting downgraded pics?
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
no, I think you are thinking of Enemy of the State :o)
.... and that was VIDEO from a satellite, not pictures .... just imagine the BANDWIDTH required ....
...... when I saw that, it pretty much ruined the movie for me .... but I like to pull movies apart like that ...
I don't think they did license plates, but the satellite footage in real time with the optical resolution they had in the movie was possible, I guess, but still a stretch
This was the same movie that turned a normal security camera into a rotating 360 degree model
rLowe
----- rL
The government obviously sees this as a matter of national security, and sees the satellite photographs as a military asset. The government in and of itself doesn't design and manufacture F-18's, but they do have a say over what countries they can be sold to. And I think that makes sense. Not to mention that the development of a lot of this stuff is funded by tax dollars from the government.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The scale runs from 1 to 9. A few entries:
Distinguish taxiways from runways at large airports. Recognize seaports.
Distinguish between models of small/medium helicopters (e.g., HELIX A from HELIX B from HELIX C, HIND D from HIND E, HAZE A from HAZE B from HAZE C).
Identify the shape of antennas on EW/GCI/ACQ radars as parabolic, parabolic with clipped corners or rectangular.
Identify the spare tire on a medium-sized truck.
Distinguish between SA-6, SA-ll, and SA-17 missile airframes.
Identify individual launcher covers (8) of vertically launched SA-N-6 on SLAVA-class vessels. Identify automobiles as sedans or station wagons.
Identify fitments and fairings on a fighter-sized aircraft (e.g., FULCRUM, FOXHOUND).
Identify ports, ladders, and vents on electronics vans.
Detect the mount for antitank guided missiles (e.g., SAGGER on BMP-1).
Detect details of the silo door hinging mechanism on Type III-F, III-G, and II-H launch silos and Type III-X launch control silos.
Identify the individual tubes of the RBU on KIROV-, KARA-, and KRIVAK-class vessels.
Identify individual rail ties.
As you can see, at 0.5M resolution, most of the intel a military force really needs can be extracted. The examples at level 7 are interesting, however.
Israel lobbied the US to put a provision into US law prohibiting commercial satellite photography of Israel. Yes, the whole country. Unclear why; maybe they're worried about newer photographs of their nuclear bomb plants or refugee camps.
Well, I don't know about you - But I walk upright. This means that to a sattellite, I'm about 7 inches across at the head, and maybe 16-19 inches at my shoulders. So yes, It would be extremely hard to identify me w/ the 1/2 meter resolution images. For all you non-bi-pedal f00s though, your mothers can keep tabs on you.
signature smigmature
- James
Did you see the Macy's Day parade? My company did that (3D-Fly over parade route). There are so many uses for hi-res imagery other than spying on someone. The thing we are finding with hi-res imagery is nobody knows what to do with it. 1m imagery was not good enough for tv, so we used 1/2 meter air-photo imagery.
From some of the other comments, do you know how long it would take to find somebody's girlfriend laying naked in their backyard? Just about forever and a day unless you knew when that person was going to lay naked in the back yard and you had total control over when the satellite was going to make the pass over that particular area( not very likely unless you can change the orbit of the earth). Otherwise it would be sheer luck!
If you want to see what the US doesn't want you to see, you can always go to terraserver. My home isn't visible, but all the army bases are...
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Nevertheless, whith that resolution you can get enough information about goods productions, plantations, petrol explorations, building surfaces, electric/energy installations, radio installations, satellital antennas (which are forbidden in some countries), and so on.
Ask Putin (replace this for any president you'd prefer) which method is cheaper to control his opposites: to maintain a satellite infrastructure and research? Or to buy the photograph?
I am not afraid of my privacity, I don't have anything important to hide, but privacity, in the sense that is technological expensive to peep you, is a fundamental value in most of "western minds"*.
* Tried to avoid "democracy" or "economy" overused words.
--ricardo
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
Aside from those naive examples, it means that healthy companies and individuals are now able to buy valued information about smaller or poorer counterparts.
So, the world has become a enourmous peep show for those who can afford it.
Definitevely not an argument to cheers, although not worse that when only few countries' governments were able to peek to the whole world.
--ricardo
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
Oh no, I had a feeling that it was a bad idea to mount my license plate flat on the roof, but I didn't know why until now!
*sigh* not to be precieved as a troll or a flamer with this statement, and I mean not to offend anyone, but one of the main ways analysists tell "male" and "female" is by breast size. Because of this, not all females are identified as such. Some males that are... um, large in the chest, are counted as females (assuming the lower region is not visible). Aside from these "features," one can not truly determine the gender of males vs. females.
Macx
Certain parts of sat images of way out in the Neveda desert are often blurred. "Must have been an anomaly", quoth the vendor, "we'll get it next time". Curiously enough, they never did.
Image tapes of the middle of nowhere in Alaska sometimes have large groups of pixels with exactly the same values in exactly the same relative positions. Yes, it probably was a processing artifact. The question is whether it was intentional.
So even with half-meter data, I still wouldn't worry that anybody will see anything secret, or that privacy is being invaded from above. Even if a sat catches you having sex on the back lawn, you will only show up as four or five pixels anyways.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Why is it the end of a monopoly on high-end space imaging if you still have to get a license from the US government to sell it?
(After all, people get licenses for Windows all the time, and presumably would continue to even if MacOS, Linux, Solaris, and all the rest dissapearaed.)
-Rob
The article mentions a few sample resolutions, including a 10 centimeter resolution that would allow you to "resolve 'the rivet lines on bomber aircraft.'" How detailed can these pictures be? I mean, could they spin Hubble around, refocus, and snap the shutters a few times, or do you really need more specialized equipment? At some point, most likely, the limits will be due to heat rising from objects blurring things, or air molecules getting in the way... etc.
However, the ultimate resolution of the spy satellites is not the only measure of their capabilities. For instance, can they image the exact same area continuously? Every 5 minutes? Every hour? Once a day? How large an area can they image at the highest possible resolution? How large an area can they image at a lower, but still useful resolution (for instance, for counting tanks or airplanes)?
My guess is that "scope time" or whatever the in-house jargon at the spy satellite agency is, would be very hard to get, and consequently ruthlessly rationed. I'd imagine perving on people sunbathing nude is generally ranked fairly low in the priority list.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
A couple of months back I wrote a work of fiction speculating on the possibility that a *company* (rather than a government) was capable of constant surveillance of any individual. What would they do with it? Well, you know how amusement parks and such are always trying to sell you footage of you doing stuff? Maybe something like that. And of course, maybe some people would pay more NOT to have their activities visible...
Tweet, tweet.
actually we can. during the war in serbia/croatia a guy was interviewed on TV who stated they saw graves with humans in them from the spy sats. he stated that both male and female bodies were observed along with children. since the average human is around 1m or so and to differentiate female from male you have to image the upper chest area with sufficient resolution, you can deduce the res of the spy sats to be around 1/16 of a meter. of course, the cameras on board have to have a greater res than that to compensate for atmospheric disturbance etc. ...basically they should be able to make out the license plate on a car...but may not be able to read it.
I believe the company in question, space imaging, inc, is owned by lockheed and raytheon. Seeing as how these are two major US defense contractors, I don't see them trying to skirt US laws.
"They" have a resolution of about 10cm, according to the article. Not so shabby. Let's see... image quality goes as the square of the resolution, so quality would be about 25 [(0.5m/0.1m)^2] times better than half meter resolution.
This could be an indication that the 'spy agencies' or whoever now have access to even more sophisticated satellite-imagery, as 'obsolete' military technology tends to become avaliable to the public in one way or another.
You always get your pictures from space 24 hrs
late to make them unusable for tactical purposes
during times of war. AND I bet you 10 bucks the
US government gets every single coordinate from
which you requested shots to be taken. Maybe even
as soon as you submit them, so you can imagine
busy towing of new stuff into hangars once their
bird gets close for a shot.
Not that the Russians would care, their RESURS F14
is still flying over Groom Lake at an altitude of
230 km (82.1 deg steep inclination) with several
course corrections having been made.
Sometimes a who, what and when is more precious
than not letting them have the info in the first
place, which is getting harder because you can
already buy old 2m resolution birds anyway.
I think you will need finer resolution to actually be able to distinguish people. Unless you're trying to detect the presence of a (big) car or something. I suppose this also depends on the size of your mom, though.
Moz.
see a Text Widget
The resolving power of any telescope can be calculated by the formula Theta = 115.8/D, .05 seconds of arc.
.5 seconds of arc in most cases, although i'm not sure this is as critical for taking pictures of terrestrial objects as it is for astronomical ones. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
.^
where Theta is angualr resolution expressed in seconds of arc, and D is the diameter of the objective of the telescope/camera, which is what a spy satellite is. Now, the Hubble telescope has an objective of 2.4 meters, which is probably pretty close to the maximum diameter that will fit inside current launch vehicles, so the NRO satellites can't be much bigger than this. so that works out to around
to figure out actual size from angular size and distance use the formula
angular size(in degrees) = 57.3*actual size / distance
which works out to right around 10 centimeters, if i've done the math right. so unless they have multi-segment meirros for their satellites or some other unknown capability that is about hte theoeretical limit of their resolution. Interestingly though, atmospheric turbulence (what astronomers refer to as 'seeing') limits actual performance to
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
The limit of resolution on a camera is the diffraction limit. That's the point where the wavelength of the light is larger than the angular distance of the object you're viewing. The formula is (angular resolution) = 1.22 * (wavelength)/(telescope diameter) in radians. To convert radians to length, multiply by the distance from your target (which is a good approximation at large distances.)
:)
Most low orbit satellites are about 700 km up. Visible light is around 300-600 nanometers...call it 400 nm.
So the theoretical minimum telescope needed to have a one-centimeter resolution on the ground would be diameter = 1.22*400e-9*700e3/1e-2, or about 34 meters across. For reference, the Hubble's mirror is 2.4 meters diameter.
So it's possible. Just not bloody likely given current limits on what we can build in space.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
A company should not need a license to sell photographs that it took with a satellite that it designed, built, and owns. The US government does not own the entire planet.
I don't think it's *that* detailed, guys.
Here's one of the early "meter" images.
Sure, you can see the road, and big buildings, but you can't really identify a person...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Does this bug other people as much as it does me?
Half-meter resolution doesn't mean that it "clearly shows objects as small as 19 inches!" This is quite misleading.
It simply means that an object of 19 inches can register in the image- and "register" simply means that a dot on the image might be brighter or darker depending on the overall colour of the object.
"To clearly show an object" implies that you'll be able to identify it. Some might even think that you'd be able to see features and details of the object. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This is better:
At half-meter resolution... forestry officials can count trees, and urban planners can view streetscapes, even discerning manhole covers.
But I wish they had put that at the top of the article, not at the end of the last paragraph!
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Of course, the optical resolution doesn't really matter, they can always zoom in the picture to get more detail. You know, like they do on The X-Files.
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