Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Yeah but a lot of the photos on Terraserver out very out of date.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!
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.