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DigitalGlobe To Sell 61cm Resolution Satellite Photos
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Sample images from DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite are now available. This is the highest resolution commercial satellite with the ability to take panchromatic images at a resolution of 61cm." Space Imaging's best offering is a 1m panchromatic resolution image, so they have some competition it seems.
Incidentally, that happened to one of my cousins; he farmed several acres of land that were passed down from our great grandfather, and devoted a small patch to growing marijuana. One of the local troublemakers got into an argument with him once, and started watching him with a satellite imaging service (cf Enemy of the State). Sure enough, he mysteriously got turned in for growing pot by an anonymous caller and lost the entire farm. When he got out of prison, he went on welfare and has been living off the government dole for quite a while now because he has few skills and a nasty criminal record that he doesn't deserve.
I really feel bad for him, and I think we should all oppose this horrible tool of surveillance before it is used against one of us.
Bill
"Holy cow, you all better get your tinfoil hats ready, because they really *can* and most likely *will* be watching us with these things!"
Except for the fact that the satellite orbits the earth every 9 minutes, so you only get 1 picture every 9 minutes. Also don't forget that the earth is revolving below it (these satellites are in polar orbit, so the earth rotates below them). Which means it takes half a day for it to get to the proper latitude, and depending on the camera's angle, it may only be able to make 2 passes (that's 2 pictures, taken 9 minutes apart) before it has to wait 12 hours.
So no, they won't be watching you with these.. and they never will until they can zoom in from geosyncronous orbit (30k miles). Physics is against them.
If it's available in the private sector, one has to wonder what the military has available. Ever since I can remember, what the general public knowledge is, usually runs about 10 years behind the times. When I got out of the military, we had been using touch tone phones (Autovon) for 5 years, but the private sector was just becoming aware of touchtone, as limited areas were beginning to test them in the USA. During the Falkland islands conflict, most people were amazed that a ship could be sunk from 150 miles away by an air launched missle. We were amazed at Stormin' Norman's description of the "Luckiest man in Iraq" (the video of a car just making it across the bridge as a laser guided tv camera bomd hit just feet behind him). That we were able to give 15 minutes warning to Saudi Arabia that a Scud was on the way and where it was targeted. (even though the tech had been in place for quite a while.)
In Afghanistan we are using poratble satellite phones and video (even CNN is using it),and (even if it is webcam quality), voice printing to identify commanders and Osama bin Laden. If you think this 61 cm is something, I wouldn't be surprised if the military resolution is at least half of 61 cm or even less. Probably be able to get the Expiration date from his drivers license, or what brand of cigarettes he smokes.
Slight correction:
Aparently, this satellite is higher up than some of the other ones... so instead of a 9 minute orbit, it's a 93 minute orbit! It can only take 1 swab of an area per orbit.. so that's 1 picture every 93 minutes. (And it's FOV is 15km, you rotate further than 15km in 93 minutes, so they have to wait 3 days to get back to the same exact spot)
Yeah but a lot of the photos on Terraserver out very out of date. If i zoom in on my address our neighborhood hasn't even been built yet.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
...in which the hirsute denizens of Walden Pond were contemplating possible Republican strategies for reducing teen pregnancies. My favorite: Mike's suggestion of a fleet of megaphone-equipped vans roaming suburban streets during the evening hours, blaring "CUT THAT OUT!" every few seconds.
On a decidedly on-topic note, though, imaging all 9,629,091 sq km (according to the CIA World Factbook 2001) of the USA at 61-cm resolution in 24-bit color would result in 77.6 terabytes of data. That's for one frame; at a rate 1 frame per second, that would be 6.7 exabytes per day. Ask the Almighty to provide you with a 10,000-to-one compression algorithm, and you could get a day's worth of data down under a petabyte.
Let's see Jon Voight find Will Smith in that.
Conservative estimates are that the US Government has military satellites at LEAST an order of magnitude better than the best commercial photos available. That would make 6.1cm resolution. Personally, I believe they're better than that... I've seen a few images through my work that has convinced me.
:)
I visited a military site in Israel where they print satellite photos... and mistakenly saw a low res screen preview (i.e. 72dpi) of a 500MB satellite photo... and I could already make out cars and trucks quite easily. The full-res data was easily 30-50x the resolution I saw on the monitor.
Think about it...
A/C... cause I'm 'fraid!
I may be much for technology, but this kind of thing comprimises US national security. I live here in the country (aka, not city) so things like airplanes crashing in our house is'nt a problem. This sub-point is that I'm safe from extra-government actions.
What it comes down to is; if we can buy pictures of 64 cm= 1 pixel, so can terrorists and enemy countries. The US military made this type of device in the Cold War so they could SPY on other countries for intelligence (however mainly USSR at the time). Now, they're used in large intelligence missions over enemy territory so that OUR soldiers don't get killed due to lack of mapping.
There is a good basis for the US military to have this technology, but what are the pluses for non-military to have this? Other than the sake of knowing, not any. They aren't valid survey techniques, you pay surveyors that. Home camera's make good security systems, sat cams don't.
The negative's come at a distinct disadvantage. Say a US civillian is interested in a Chinese nuclear power reactor and pays for sat scans. Then they post it online, which I believe this has been done (can't remember site). If the Chinese gov't find about this, don't you think that they would be slightly miffed off at the US? Or how about taking pictures of US military installations? Those are dangerous to the saftey of US citizens, Military and non-military.
Josh Crawley
ps: I'll probably be modded down, since mod's here dislike anything but the typical knee-jerk , no matter how well a disagreeing is written.
SpaceImaging charges 55$ per sqkm with a minimum of 100 sqkm. So for those highly optimistic useful 50 images a day they're making 5500$ each. That's half the figure you came up with. Now for the kicker. Many organizations are buying many hundreds of sqkm all the time from arial recon companies. Why? Farmers can use the data to figure out how well their crops are doing, knowing where water collected after a rainfall tells you where you may or may not need to water the next week which saves you lots of money in both equipment and man hours. If you can save a 100,000$ worth of crop for spending 20,000 you just saved yourself 80% of what your loses would have been. State governments can spend a couple grand every year to inventory public roads. Not all uses for arial photography require a single precise image taken every five minutes. SpaceImaging is just complimenting a business that lots of organizations already use.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.