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India Launches World's First Stereo Imaging Satellite
sgups writes "India will tomorrow inaugurate a new launch pad at its Satish Dhawan space port near Chennai, on the south-east coast, by putting the world's first stereographic mapping satellite into orbit.
The most innovative feature of the 1.6-tonne Cartosat-1 is its pair of cameras, which will give stereo images of the earth's surface that can distinguish features down to 2.5 metres across. They will directly generate three-dimensional maps that have until now been achievable only indirectly, by combining data from a large number of satellite passes over the same place.
"Such a stereographic imaging system does not exist in the civil sector anywhere else," says Mr Nair, chairman of the Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). "It will give information about heights that will be very useful in applications such as planning power lines."
Cartosat-1 will join what is already the world's largest cluster of non-military remote sensing satellites. Six Indian spacecraft are already observing the earth with a wide range of instruments."
Six Indian spacecraft are already observing the earth with a wide range of instruments."
Though probably none are currently tracking CowboyNeal.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But HIFI stereo, which means it has the highest level of fidelity available. It also sports an 8-track.
Now we can prove the world is round!
There is no sig
...will be off-shored to China.
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
do the cameras have to be to get a proper parallax?
Uh, can't they already determine heights to high degree of accuracy with GPS or other radio wave methods? How would a picture be more accurate?
I don't get. If it's not a geosync, then it's going to be moving, so they could just use 2 images from a few seconds apart to get the required images. No?
And how many countries have the capability? That's what I want to know.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
...alot of cross-eyed googlers once google gets their hands on the data :)
But really, this is very cool - I'm looking forward to seeing some of the data.
...probably had this ability in the late 60s or early 70s.
Stereoscopic imagery is great for mapping geology. Most stereo photos are not shot at a small enough scale to do regional mapping so this could be wonderful. Hopefully the data will be easily obtainable and the coverage will be suitable to do broad-scale work.
Hmmm. Haven't found my answer yet, but it *might* be buried in this "Techinical features" document somewhere.
I'm going to assume the satellite designers knew what they were doing and there is some good reason for this.
:-), I'm looking for something a little more informed.)
That said, given the resolution with which we know the position of a given satellite, and the low resolution of the source image in this case, what advantage does using two cameras give you, vs. taking one camera and snapping two pictures in quick succession?
Maybe they can't be snapped quickly enough? But then, you'd think the larger parallax would be helpful, not harmful.) I know consumer cameras have the basic tech now to take a snapshot of the CCD state and process it later, that tech ought to scale right with the CCD resolution, whatever it is.
Maybe this is so you can choose the parallax direction, instead of the orbit forcing your choice? Does the image processing need the parallax to show up in some particular direction relative to the light source to work?
Honest questions; knowledgeable answers appreciated. (As you can see, I can talk out of my ass too
This is just supposition, based on the fact that two cameras on a satellite would not be far enough apart to generate parallax.
Share. Until it becomes uncomfortable. Or at least a little.
I knew they were big into offshoring but...
...* view 3D maps of nude female sunbathers.
Only US mods will mod it down.
Shouldn't it read "India To Launch World's First Stereo Imaging Satellite" since they will do it tomorrow?
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Over the summer and last semester I worked in a nano-satellite lab at ASU. The most recent satellite of ours that was launched was Three Corner Sat and one of its primary mission objective was sterio imaging.
g e=3CS
http://threecornersat.jpl.nasa.gov/
http://nasa.asu.edu/
https://spacegrant.colorado.edu/tiki-index.php?pa
Unfortunately, the two of our satellites that got launched were released at 50,000 km instead of 100,000 km so they burnt up before they could power up.
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/2737
-- James
Isn't India a 3rd world nation, which even gets aid from my government (US)? This sound like a pretty big achievement. If this is all as a result of Indian input, I will from now on look at it in a different light.
The satellite will be permanently pointed at Pakistan.
They won't even see it.
How long till Google offers a virtual walkthrough on its map site? Seriously though, not much new here... just a more commercial package and a venue for selling more software to assemble the images. Anyone in the 'civil' field who needed it before had access to aerial stereoscopic images which may actually still be cheaper. Cool toy though.
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Maybe they will be eyeing the
d ina,+WA+98039&ll=47.627685,-122.242877&spn=0.00786 4,0.010664&t=k&hl=en">Mr Bill Gates mansion.
Playboy mansion
and
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1835+73rd+Ave+NE,Me
Any truth to the rumor that they're going to oursource their call center to a US firm?
I'm kidding!
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
... hopefully with Dolby!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Submit this post without text in the body? -> OK (the subject says it all)
Far appart at the TARGET, not on the ORIGIN. They can just angle the cameras and set whatever distance at the TARGET they want. The land wont change that much on every pass :D Tectonic plate movement isnt that fast :D
One can trail the other camera by miles (at the TARGET) yet still be able to reproduce stereo images
Many are thinking it, I'm just saying it is all...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Mr Bill Gates mansion.
Stereo imaging?
Is that like "Hi-Fi"?
PFFFFT! Call me when you've got 7.1 Surround THX imaging!
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Um...right. Like decades if not centuries of maps can't help there. Besides, I would think that in a country as large as India, they'd be focusing on localized power generation.
Sorry, but this sounds like a really lame excuse for lobbing a satellite up there to spy on Pakistan, with a happy-go-lucky PR spin so the average citizen thinks "oh, another satellite that will be useful!" Yessir, routing power lines.
Not like the US hasn't done the same thing- the majority of shuttle missions were for either admitted, or "disguised-as-scientific-experimentation" military satellites.
Please help metamoderate.
Headline and article don't quite line up...
Why go through the expense of a satellite for stereo imaging when all it takes is a simple click of a mouse?
portable holographic projection technology and we can have portable maps. Life saver for navigating foreign cities! Kool.
Due to spacecraft (or aircraft) motion, stereo pairs are generated along the flightpath if sequential images overlap. In many systems, each image n generates overlap with both image n+1 and n+2. Given the ability to launch two cameras, why not launch a single camera with more capabilities? Another minor, and common, error is that the Cartosat-1 has a 2.5m pixel on its CCD, which does not transalate into a 2.5m "resolution." CCD resolution corresponds to Ground Sampled Distance (GSD), or the amount of ground sampled on one pixel. Ground resolved distance, (GRD), measures the highest frequency visible in the image and is what we normally think of as "resolution." As a result, for electro optical systems, GRD = 2 x GSD.
Stereo from space is nothing new. The first ever spy satellites all had stereo panoramic cameras. Two cameras mounted on the same platform would not provide sufficient parrallax to get useful stereo, so what is most likely happening is that ALL images are in stereo with images taken forward and behind the sensor. This sounds good in theory, but the utility is somewhat limited, and you probably won't get any good nadir shots.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
It's mind-boggling how far we've come in the past ten years. Did any of you guys (gals?) think this would be possible in 1995?
Perhaps you ought to RTFA (or at least TFS)...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Exactly what I was thinking. At 650km, exactly how high of resolution do 2 cameras, say 1 meter apart, need to be in order to distinguish a 1 meter tall object from a 2 meter tall object? And is a 1 meter vertical resolution even all that useful for much more than cross-city or cross-county gradients and such.
... an arc length of about 1190 km could do a much better job with lower resolution cameras. A 10 deg separation may be a bit much, but even 1 deg would probably work great.
Seems to me that 2 satellites on the same orbit, say 10 deg (about 0.17 radians) apart from each other
Perhaps I'm not understanding how the submitter is using the term "non-military", and not to wave Uncle Sam's flag too much, but offhand I can think of more than six US RS platforms/sensors:
EOS/Terra/MODIS http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Landsat ETM+ http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Landsat MSS (yes still going)
AVHRR http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataset/AVHRR/
GOES http://www.goes.noaa.gov/
ASTER http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/
Not to mention US based commercial satellites:
IKONOS http://www.spaceimaging.com/
Quickbird URL:http://www.digitalglobe.com/
Getting proper parallax from 620 km is a bit tricky. The cameras would need to be many km apart to get good stereo (31 km camera baseline is equivalent to the parallax that human eyes have at 1 meter).
Instead, I suspect that the parallax is achieved by having two cameras that point slightly different angles. One points down and forward along the track of the satellite, the other points down and backward. Thus, as the satellite passes overhead, the same spot on the ground is seen by the two cameras in succession from different parts of the orbit.
For purposes of get topo data on fixed objects, its more than adequate. Given that the satellite is moving about 8 km/sec, it traverses the needed baseline for stereo in only a few seconds. This is not enough time for the scene to have changed that much.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
There are 2 cameras because last weekend's there was a "Buy one get one Free" deal in Frys.
The spacecraft is configured with the Panchromatic cameras which are mounted such that one camera is looking at +26 deg. w.r.t. nadir and the other at -5 deg. w.r.t. nadir along the track. These two cameras combinedly provide stereoscopic image pairs in the same pass.
I have something of a hard time seeing the utility of this new system.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
India has been in the headlines a lot lately, and not much of it has been anything horrible. Not to shabby for a country that just got it's dependence not even 60 years ago.
And even more amazingly, they later achieved independence...
I have neither class nor rank. I am unique.
There's probably TWO cameras, one for visible light, one for infrared. Not two cameras for binocular vision. The two "eyes" would be too close together for any usable stereoscopic effect.
My first thought went to this as well. I still don't know why they wouldn't use UAVs though. Probably cheaper. These types of 3d-images are especially valuable in generating simulations to familiarizes personnel with specific urban landscapes before they're actually on the ground.
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
You are a humourless killjoy.
Stop criticizing everyone else's cheap jokes and try making some of your own.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
This isn't the first stereographic satellite that's accessible to the general public; that would be MISR - NASA's Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer, built by JPL, with nine cameras pointed in different directions along its direction of travel in polar orbit, ranging from nadir (straight down) to 70 degrees in either direction. Compared to India's new high-resolution satellite, MISR seems very low resolution - 275 meters per pixel - however, it covers the entire surface of the Earth every few days and all of the data is available for free at this resolution, while India's satellite is "targeting"; it only images a particular area when it is programmed to do so. MISR is used primarily to study clouds and aerosols.
To see some 3-D images taken by MISR or some animations of its 9 cameras' views of different scenes, check out their gallery.
You dont need two cameras spaced apart ... just snap two pictures from one camera delayed a second or whatever is needed.
.. the camera is moving.
Remember
Can this be done with looking at stars? E.g., take a picture of a cluster of stars from one place in the Earths orbit around the Sun then take the same picture of the same cluster of stars 182 days later. Is the Earth's orbit large enough to see three dimensionality for our closest stars? I.e. depth?
http://www.spotimage.fr/html/_167_171_810_.php Launched 1986
Aster 15 m stereographic
http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/content/03_data/01_Da ta_Products/DEM.PDF
First launched 1999. $3600 sq km cost US$60 and are public access.
IKONOS 1 m stereographic
http://www.spaceimaging.com/products/ikonos/stereo .htm
BEOWULF CLUSTER?
Sorry. Had to be done. Now that THAT'S out of the way....
Move along people, nothing to see here.
Somebody forgot their wheaties this morning
Plenty of orbiting satellites up there. What's amazing is this comes from a country with an average literacy rate of 52% (compared to 97% for the U.S.).
48% of their citizens can't read or write, but they're funding a space program to the equivalent of a few billion U.S. dollars. Amazing. I can only imagine what taxes must be like in India to pay for something so expensive when the per capita income is so low.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Wouldn't an airplane be a much better/cheaper way to get height information? Wouldn't radar be more accurate than photos?
Well, it's always good to read the article and the summary, but in this case the answer isn't that. He's asking how far about the pair of cameras are. But I'm sure he appreciates your oh so informative and friendly response regardless.
Perhaps you ought to read the question to which you're responding.
Actually, this is the kind of stuff used to generate data to program (ground hugging) cruise missiles with. The data generated can also be used as input for terrain following radars that the Indians use.
All of the above are critical technologies for a succesful (stealthy) nuclear first strike.
His entire point was that the cameras aren't far enough apart to get much height detail - info he got from the summary. Pull your head out of your ass, fucktard.
There is one really big problem with this -- insufficient stereo separation for the distances covered. from the distance at which a satellite orbits, you would have to either separate the cameras by a significant distance (probably several hundred meters, I haven't done the math), or have a super-super-high-res CCD to actually have *any* real measurable difference between the images captured by both cameras. Subpixel analysis will yield some differences due to stereo separation, but the depth resolution of this system can't be good unless they can get the cameras further apart than is possible on most satellites.
Report is reaching of a strange behavior by the American and Russian forces in the Earth's Artic regions. Completely unannounced, both the super powers are launching thousands of missiles from both land based and aircraft launched these missiles that are being directed out of the earth's atmosphere into the outer space regions of our planets atmosphere.
From various news services however there is being reported that Russia and the United States are conducting Missile Defense War games. The valid question is why was this separate military exercise not previously announced. Some UFO researchers believe that both the forces are jointly fighting something that they are not saying.
There are also reports that someone is manipulating the earth's weather systems in a massive scale. Are American and Russians jointly fighting them?
The cosmic bursts hitting the earth are also strange. The Solar flares in recent days have shown extreme abnormal behavior.
The increasing earthquakes, floods, droughts and landslides may have been caused by some artificial agents.
On the surface the American and Russians are saying these missile launches are mart of military exercises but why are they unannounced.
What triggered this massive launch of terrestrial missiles in thousands?
http://tinyurl.com/cpva2/
... before the Americans blow it up.
It'll take them longer than that to sort through their English to metric conversion tables. If they remember to use them this time.
at the rate American companies(who get American tax breaks, BTW) are sending are jobs to India, those literacy numbers will swap.
so nothng to worry about.
Becasue every American wants good scholls and no taxes.
*the misspelling were intentional..this time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Perhaps you ought to read the question to which you're responding.
Perhaps you ought to follow your own advice, genius. Scroll up, and you'll see that I was responding to post #12434459.
Thanks for playing, though.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
No, it wasn't. Try reading the post I actually responded to. You're referring to that post's parent.
Hope that clears things up for you.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Man, when that gets marked as troll, it means only one o2 more things. /. is trolled by pro-india pr firms.
1 )the mods have no sense of humor
more )
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Frankly, this isn't a novel thing. Other than the 2m resolution, the corona spy satellite had stereophonic cameras in 1960.
Wow, India is late to the party by 45 years and the article submitter makes it sound as if its _the_ innovation of the year. Bah.
I'll try. I takes two to stereotype.
I wonder if any other country id going to get the balls to ask how they did it
I'm kinda disappointed and surprised by this.
p ?country=356).
Here we have a country that (according to the UN) holds 50% of the world's hungry:
"Nearly 50 percent of the world's hungry live in India, a low-income, food-deficit country. Around 35 percent of India's population - 350 million - are considered food-insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum energy requirements.
Nutritional and health indicators are extremely low. Nearly nine out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and anaemia. Anaemia in pregnant women causes 20 percent of infant mortality. More than half of the children under five are moderately or severely malnourished, or suffer from stunting."
This is straight out of the UN Food Program webpage (http://www.wfp.org/country_brief/indexcountry.as
So, they put this satellite up for what? To better see their people starving ?
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
they already are taking huge images. The Landsat instruments took huge images 35 years ago (6Kx6K) and newer instruments spit out even more.
1. The Indian economy happens to be the 12th largest in terms of GDP and 4th largest when adjusted for PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). I quote from the Wikipedia article:
With a GDP of 568 billion (B$) ($3.096 trillion (T$) at PPP) India has the world's 12th largest economy (and the 4th largest when adjusted for PPP). However, the large population means that per capita income is quite low. In 2003 the World Bank ranked India 143rd in PPP per capita income and 160th in real terms, among 208 countries and territories.
2. India has (through the Indian Space Research Organization) pursued a pretty widespread (and largely non-military space program) since the 60's. From this relevant Wikipedia article:
# 1962: Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR); formed by the Department of Atomic Energy, and work on establishing Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) near Trivandrum began.
# 1963: First sounding rocket launched from TERLS (November 21, 1963).
# 1965: Space Science & Technology Centre (SSTC) established in Thumba.
# 1967: Satellite Telecommunication Earth Station set up at Ahmedabad.
# 1972: Space Commission and Department of Space set up.
# 1975: First Indian Satellite, Aryabhatta, launched (April 19, 1975).
It's also fruitful to note that India was a British colony till 1947. IMHO, starting a space program in about 1.5 decades after gaining independence is a laudable achievement. The major problem which India faces today is it's large population, which pretty much negates all the economic advances, and causes it's perception as a "thirld world country" to continue.
It is also worth noting that India seems to be spending substantial amounts of money to improve it's people's lot and advancing education, science and research, rather than spending it instead on aggressive military tactics, which seems to be the trend nowadays. If you read up the history of the nation, you'll see that it's one of the few countries that has never pursued invasion/colonialism, and has instead been frequently invaded by conquerers (Mughals, British, etc) who looted the wealth of a formerly rich region and left it in a state that it's trying to dig itself out of now.
PS: Posted this because I perceived a derogatory slant in the Parent's use of the term "third world country". I find the practice of using wealth to rank nations (especially so when used to diss poor nations) quite abnoxious. I have nothing against using the term in a scientific/neutral sense.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"Wow, India is late to the party by 45 years and the article submitter makes it sound as if its _the_ innovation of the year. Bah."
;) you cant compare that low resolution us sat with this high resoultion satellite !
you are such a loser
pathetic !
Let's get this feature into Google Maps
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
...is why we're so interested in photographing ourselves? What honest practical purpose does it serve other than, "Hey, that's my house, kind of cool..."?
Just goes to show, if you're correcting someone, particularly an AC, you need a quote of their error in your post.
I'm going to act as if the poster was sincere and not a troll, therefore deserving of a thoughtful answer.
Every government is faced with the challenge of balancing the short term needs of the impoverished with the long term obligation to develop the national infrastructure and long term high paying jobs and therefore wealth of their economy.
In the US from the 1960's onward, there were cries by some that the billions of dollars spent on our space program should have been spent on our poor. While we don't have the numbers of poor that are in India, a visit to American rural areas like Appalachia or any number of American Indian reservations or a visit to American inner city areas will tell you that we still have our own millions of people living in violent areas, without adequate food, medical care, education, or hope for improvement in these areas.
Even so, others will argue that much of American wealth created and shared by most of the population was helped by research in space and other military programs. (The reason we started our program was to maintain parity with the former Soviet Union.) If spin-offs from the Indian investments in space translate to private sector jobs, then an argument may be made that it has long term value.
If there is anything the Ronald Reagan taught us Americans (and no, I was NOT a big fan of Reagan's in many areas), it was that symbols, even costly symbols, can motivate millions to take actions toward better goals. (He followed Jimmy Carter. A man whose intelligence, sincerity and battles for human rights, were overshadowed during his presidency by American feelings of "malaise" and general helplessness felt during the hostage crisis, oil shortages, and resulting recession.)
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Ok, For those of you wondering why they use 2 cameras . . . Don't think of it as a typical camera CCD sensor, where you snap a picture, think of it a s a pushbroom. It is one long array(the broom) that, as the sattelite travels, collects information. So, like pushing a broom, you collect as it moves.By having a forward facing sensor (26)and rearward facing (-5) you have 2 "brooms" sweeping the sky, collecting the same information, but the large angle creates a paralax(31 I'll leave the math to someone else).
You can do this with 1 sensor by "pointing" in 2 directions, to gain paralax, but that requires moving the platform (sattelite) and doing this repeatadly is a real pain. Essentialy, this sattelite will capture the data in 1 pass, along the same track, in a manner that is easy and predictable for post-processing. I think its a very slick setup, a should provide alot of useful data.
See - this is what happens when the comedy gets outsourced. People want their jokes cheap, but with the cultural barriers and all, it just doesn't work.
:-)
Let's bring joke-writing back to the USA where it belongs! That way, the comedians can return to their real jobs, and not need to write network news stories to survive.
ASTER imagery on the Terra satellite can generate stereo images from the band 3 nadir and rear looking sensors. It's not 2.5 m but it has been done by satellite before.
WHAT??? Those sneaky Indians!
India never ceases to amaze me. No bias there of course.
Linux Resources
they just have to be in line along the route. there is a time lapse between the right and left image. the parallax can be whatever you like.
I don't know how this qualifies as a first though, the original spy satellites from the 50's were stereoscopic. what the hell were they called... ah yes, corona.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
was that supposed to be funny? ;)
If it was a military sattelite, they wouldn't have announced launching it. Even if they did annouce it, do you think they would have publicly announced *what* the sattelite can do?
You my sir are one confused American just like any other American out here. I need not say anything beyond this as my friends above pretty much clarified everything you need to know. Good Day.
I think it's got one camera pointing forward and one pointing backwards so it takes two pictures at different times.
from here
"This the first satellite to carry two cameras to take 3-D images and the images to be taken by CARTOSAT-1 will have a spatial resolution of 2.5 metre and the cameras will cover a swath of 30 km and they are mounted on such way that near simultaneous imaging of the same from different two angles is possible," he added. The cameras are steerable across the direction of the satellite's movement to facilitate the imaging of an area more frequently.
I think "near simultaneous" is the critical wording in that description.
He followed Jimmy Carter. A man whose intelligence, sincerity and battles for human rights, were overshadowed during his presidency by American feelings of "malaise" A man who apparently had no idea that politics is based on compromise and quid-pro-quo, and therefore was completely ineffective in getting anything accomplished due to his strict adherence to principle. Sad but true, apparently integrity is a serious disadvantage to being an effective president... just look at how much Bush has accomplished!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This company http://geotango.com/products/silvereye.htm/ has a product that can generate 3D models and measurements from a single satellite image as long as the original sensor metadata is available.
Proud to be an Indian!
First rule of trolling:
Don't make your troll post so fucking obvious to detect.
Teh term trolling by itself belives in a view point.
For instance
Windows crashes all the time, and windows sucks. : May be termed insightful, although the statement cannot be proved to be true or false
Linux crashes all the time, and linux sucks. : Will be termed troll, although it cannot be proved to be true or false.
So it is all in your eyes, I laughed at that statement, some mod i guess thought otherwise.
If NRO had 10 meter stereo in the 1960s, just what do you think they have now? My guess is something with an order of magnitude more resolution and color bandwidth than anything India can put up.
"largest cluster of non-military satellites" my fanny. You *know* their military (and 78 others) use this data.
I guess they just mean the data isn't restricted to the military.
See subject
What ever happened to all the data we were going to get from the Shuttle Endeavor's mapping mission? What has been done with it?
I found some info here: Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Home page
http://srtm.usgs.gov/
funnier
Am I the only one that thinks 2.5 meter resolution is pretty sloppy? Or is this a case where 2.5 meters is the "advertised" resolution, and special customers get 0.25 meters?
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
I thought the first rule of trolling is that we don't talk about trolling.
Man, I think there's a huge opportunity for a joint venture between the Indian Government and Google. "Google Earth".
[black helicopters] (Search Web) (Search Space Imagery) (I'm feel nosey)
Isn't this a bit optimistic? It hasn't even left the ground yet.
I can see it now:
Shuttle commander: We're not going to make orbit! Toss something overboard!
Copilot: Lets see, hmmm, let's toss those ASU satellites. Since they're nano-satellites I'll just send'em out our Lockheed Martin Super-duper Space Toilet. Don't want to bother with airlock.
"Flushing sound"
I went to U of A anyway. Go Wildcats!!!
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
The sentence "Do not underestimate the significant drain half a million illiterates can pose on an economy" should read half a billion illiterates. Sorry, being from the U.S., I'm not used to speaking of populations in terms of billions.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Maybe not as significant but the same rocket will also be launching a HAM satellite for the south asian region.
At last south asian HAM operators can rejoice.
Link: http://www.isro.org/Cartosat/Page5.htm
The same rocket launch also put into place ham satellite for use in South Asia. There are other satellites available for personal use (AMSAT has several, including (Echo 51) but VUSat is focused on use from India and South Asia.
http://isro.org/Cartosat/images/onpad-1-May-1.jpg
http://isro.org/Cartosat/images/onpad-2-May-1.jpg
..instead of people asking or commenting about the actual launch itself, most people are bothered about why India is not feeding its hungry people and launching satellites in space.
Doesnt it feel a lil daft asking these questions over & over again?!Is a developing country only expected to feed it hungry nad look after the poverty problem.I really fail to understand that point of view.
Lord of the Binges.
Its more like a technology demonstrator but given that ISRO runs on a shoestirng budget as the govt. has social priorities, the launch has to be justified using a socially usefull purpose. As for spying on Pakistan India already gets all it wants from its existing satellites as well as US owned satellites. The US is pretty friendly with India and more than happy to hand over imagery e.g. During the Kargill conflict the US provided satellite images of Pakistani intruders on Indian soil to the Indian air Force so they could better target their (US provided) smart bombs .
**Life is too short to be serious**
In addition, there is a stereographic camera currently in orbit around Mars.
-- Stephen.
Indeed, imagine the possibilities. (well, resolution needs improvement. But otherwise a viable possibility.)
If you look up to the night sky, and cross your eyes just right, you can make the two cameras on the satellite overlap and it looks 3-D!
This isn't even slightly new. There are even stereographic images available to the public (modis).
The blurb even admits it isn't new when it says, "Such a stereographic imaging system does not exist in the civil sector anywhere else", which I take to mean it exists outside the civil sector, because otherwise the comment is just plain stupid. Like saying it's the first.
It was announced for the same reason China announces every excessively huge project they throw billions at: National Pride. "Look, its the first of its kind!"
It does look like the old "outsourcing to india gets you crappy results" and "India doesn't have people who can innovate" dreamers are going to be looking for new dreams and/or jobs, though. It's obvious that their engineers are catching up.
>>If they could only get a little better resolution, I can imagine they could pull in some cash by taking pictures of nude beaches. You would think that by now the first thought with new tech would be, "how can I use this for porn?"
2.5 Meters should cover my package in pretty good detail. I'll leave it out just in case...
I'm not saying you're wrong about Pakistan though, just that you're wrong about archived maps of India...
[o]_O
Kashmir ? That's like saying the US pursues colonization because it considers seattle to be part of it's territory -- only moonbats would dispute what it otherwise part and parcel of US territory. Same for Kashmir and Sikkim.
East Pakistan is better known as the independant nation of Bangladesh which India helped during its war of independance from Pakistan who used to treat the then East Pakistan as a colony.
Ceylon is better known as the independant nation of Sri Lanka.
Why don't you read up on the history of India?
To the moderators: You guys should read up also.
My web domain.
Many people have posted almost the right answer for why two cameras are needed, one pointing slightly forward, one slightly back, for stereo. That's right, as far as it goes.
But what people are missing is that these are not cameras like you are used to. The pictures they take are not (say) 4k x 4k, they are 4k by 1 pixel. That one-pixel-high image is painted across the surface by the motion of the satellite, generating a very long strip image. Typically, the cameras run continuously.
So, that's why you can't just "snap a photo, move the camera, snap another one". These are not snapshots, they are long strip images taken a scanline at a time. Two fixed cameras are the right answer.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
We can wave a bigger badder penis at our aunties than those skinny Indians can ever hope to.
SPOT 5 is able to generate hi-res stereo pairs.
Sample movie of the Vesuvio: here
Why is India doing this?
India has a surplus of food to the extent that lack of demand is bringing the food price down to the level of hurting the farmers earnnings.
Distribution of wealth has been a major problem for india, While surplus food is rotting in some places, people in remote parts of india are suffering.
I believe the lack of precise maps was realised during the recent tsunami. I also presume Microsoft bangalore is working (god knows what can M$ deliver) in the direction of generating digital maps for precise agriculture (what ever it means).
Why would india spend on hi tech stuff, when it could have spent on poverty. I beleive it would cost india more to out source the remote sensing/mapping to developed countries. not only can it get it done cheaply, it probably may earn provinding services to other countries. (Like how Brazil realized that paying of M$, will sqeeze them dry, while they could use free-ware, albeit with some pain).
Also India learnt it the hard way of not trusting the developed nations (esp America). America has probably hurt India's ambition to achieve technology, more than any other country. India's thrive for self-reliance far exceeds the benefits of self-reliance in most of its projects.
Indian Space programe, I believe is a good success for india, especially at cost-benefit ratio. it probably has been more productive than the Chineese space program. While its other projects, esp related to defence, have been a huge drain.
I say, out source the space missions to countries like India and China, they could be done cheaper. it will decrease the tax burden for americans.
-j
yeah.. unless the "billions" are what you spend for Iraq war to count how many "millions" you have killed
Correction, Anonymous Coward: you're the second.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
India's remote sensing satellite CARTOSAT-1 was on Thursday successfully placed in orbit, 18 minutes after the PSLV-C6 carrying it lifted off from Sriharikota.
Thirty seconds later, the PSLV-C6 placed another satellite HAMSAT in orbit.
They were talking about this process being used for the Mars mapping missions already... Must be the first in Earth orbit...
My Rupees 2 on this on
a) Why this is such a big deal
b) Why at all do this
ISRO deserves all the praise it can get. During these moments, its important to not look just at the success - but view them in the context of our failures.
ISRO did have a few bad starts with our Augmented/Advanced Satellite Launch Vehicles (ASLV) http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aslv.htm which went crash and burn often enough to earn the title Another Sea Loving Vehicle. This could have very well crippled any space program. But we got it right - and now we get it right most of the time.
In India, the news on Indian channels also focus as much on the reusability of the launch vehicle itself and the loads we are able to ship, thereby making us less reliant on Ariane etc.. Forex is precious, we need to preserve it.
And regarding our priorities - hunger, education etc. Look, India is huge. We get hit bad by disasters, if you look at it most of the objectives of the satellites relate to basic needs - communication, weather, water resource management, land development, disaster management - http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/May01_2005.htm these objectives are of relevance to most of India.
Any country worth its salt must be self reliant, we maybe poor, but I dont believe investing in such technology is wasteful. India may appear to drag its heel more than others - because its big. Our political establishment is pretty bad - but credit where its due - though its messy in the details, there is consensus on the larger issues of development.
http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/May05_2005.htm
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
http://news.com.com/India+launches+mapping+satelli te/2100-7337_3-5696377.html
First Stereo Imaging satellite?
9 ED_0.html
e =general&tipo=Image&tx0=Image&tx1=&col=mmg&qp=&qs= &qc=&ws=1&nh=12&lk=1&vf=0&ql=a&op0=%2B&fl0=Content Type%3A&ty0=p&op1=%2B&fl1=category%3A&ty1=p&op2=%2 B&fl2=showcase%3A&ty2=p&tx2=SEMU775V9ED&showcase=M ars+Express 4 OD_0.html
ESA presently has a stereo camera orbiting Mars on Mars Express:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMUC75V
See the following URL's for images/movies:
http://search.esa.int/queryIG.html?rf=3&searchTyp
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMCAE47
I've been wondering where they got to.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23