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Google Earth To Show Ocean Floor
f1vlad writes "Google is expected to announce the addition of ocean floor imagery to its Google Earth project, which will complete digital representation of our planet. 'The existing site, to which an estimated 400 million people have had access, already includes three-dimensional representations of large cities around the world and includes images from street-level and aerial photography covering thousands of miles across Britain and elsewhere. The new additions to the website are expected to include views of the ocean, and portions of the seabed. They will also provide detailed environmental data that will enhance information about the effect of climate change on the world's seas and oceans.'"
check out the northwest coast of the US for a good example.
I don't know if this is an example of whats to come or if whats to come is going to be even better but I welcome higher resolution imagery of our planet.
Nearly all the street-level photos on Google Maps are aerial rather than satellite. If you can see windows in houses or road markings, then they are definitely aerial. Publically available satellite imagery is rarely much better than 1m resolution but some of the best govenment operated satellites claim to have resolutions comparable to aerial photos (I've not seen any samples myself though).
already done.... http://www.google.com/mars/
I don't even worry about my land-based marijuana farm in my hometown
Google hasn't updated the maps around here for 10 years . . .
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
You make a good point. However, Google Earth now has an option to regress the date of the imagery along a timeline. You click the timeline button, and you can slide it back and forth and see older satellite images along with the date of the photo. My area, although fairly rural, has imagery back to '95 and as recent as '07.
Coincidently enough, your answer was published today.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3927935&c=FEA&s=BUS
Waiting for Profits in Space
GeoEye Fights Delays With New Imaging Satellite
By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL
Published: 2 February 2009
Anyone who's used Google Earth has likely seen images from GeoEye, a Dulles, Va., Earth-imaging company. The Internet giant allows users to zoom in from a view of a continent to a car on the street by using images from GeoEye, along with ones from competitor DigitalGlobe, the U.S. Geological Survey and elsewhere.
GeoEye has used its flagship Ikonos satellite to provide images for Google and the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), its biggest customer. But those customers - and investors - have been waiting for GeoEye-1, the company's newest satellite, to become fully operational.
GeoEye-1 has faced delays from launch to operation, and as a result, the company has been missing out on revenues under a new NGA contract.
GeoEye-1, a two-story-tall satellite built by a contractor team led by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, is the world's highest-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite, according to the company. The first image the satellite took was of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania; a tennis player is visible about to serve the ball.
GeoEye-1's launch, originally planned for the first quarter of 2007, finally took place last Sept. 6. Work went slower than planned, then the launch was bumped to allow Boeing Launch Services to give priority to a U.S. government launch. Once in orbit, the satellite suffered from delays in calibrating its accuracy and testing its software. The process, which normally takes up to three months, has lasted five so far, according to GeoEye spokes-man Mark Brender.
GeoEye has told investors for several months that the company is nearing the end of this phase. Matt O'Connell, the company's president and chief executive, said the GeoEye-1 satellite should be fully operational at least by the end of the first quarter of 2009, though GeoEye is aiming for sometime this month.
"We're still in the process of fine-tuning the accuracy," O'Connell said. "You make a change, you do a couple of orbits, you look at the imagery, you test it, you find what you think might be a bug, you do another change. So it's an iterative process, so it takes a while."
The process now is focusing on aligning the positional accuracy of the satellite with the GPS grid, he said. "We're all disappointed that it hasn't gone faster. But we're excited that we are nearing the end of the tunnel."
O'Connell said testing that he's seen lately makes him more confident that GeoEye-1 is getting closer to becoming fully operational, as more glitches are eliminated and the satellite is "hitting accuracy levels that are near our target."
What's hanging in the balance is a new Service Level Agreement with the NGA that would boost GeoEye's revenues. Once GeoEye-1 is operational and the NGA certifies GeoEye-1 images as meeting the agency's standards, NGA will buy $12.5 million in GeoEye-1 images a month under its NextView program. That will give GeoEye a consistent revenue source after somewhat bumpy revenues in recent quarters. Revenues were down 24 percent to $106 million for the first nine months of 2008.
GeoEye's competitor, DigitalGlobe, won the first contract under the NextView program. Its satellite, WorldView-3, provides black-and-white images to NGA.
"We're comfortable the GeoEye is on a path that's going to have [GeoEye-1] operational and available for NGA taskings," NGA spokesman Dave Burpee said.
In the meantime, the NGA and Google keep buying images from Ikonos, which was launched in 1999 by GeoEye's predecessor company, Space Imaging. GeoEye was formed in 2006 when OrbImage, a company O'Connell also headed, bought Space Imaging, a Lockheed Martin-Raytheon joint venture.
Removing libcrypto.so.0.9.8 from google-earth directory helped me.