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Google Earth's New Satellites
Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC provides some insights into the next generation satellites being built for Google by contractor DigitalGlobe in Colorado. The resolution of these satellites' cameras is sufficient to resolve objects that are only 25cm wide. Unfortunately, the public will be allowed only half that image quality, the best being reserved for the U.S. military. 'The light comes in through a barrel structure, pointed at the Earth, and is bounced around by a series of mirrors, before being focused onto a CCD sensor. The big difference – apart from the size – between this and a typical handheld digital camera, is that the spacecraft will not just take snapshots but continuous images along thin strips of land or sea.'"
ITAR applying to satellites and space probes is a right pain in the ass for anyone actually trying to get useful work done with international assistance.
What, pray tell, is a "continuous image" and how is it not a series of snapshots?
Is this like a video (which is seemingly continuous over time, made by sequencing snapshots) or like a panoramic image (which is continuous over space, made by processing/overlaying snapshots)?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I thought the original satellites were not owned by google but the images were leased. Do these satellites actually belong to google?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
The technologies that exist to create such high tech maps are incredible. I find it sad the the average human will mostly never see the extent of this technology. There are many technologies that already exist that we will never see or hear about. It is to bad that we can't even experience a high quality images of the world we live in. I would find it incredible interesting to view.
I'm not exactly crying a river of despondent tears.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I wish they'd do a modern (eg LTE) version of what Teledesic claimed to intend. Global access to data communication with a direct link to Google's cloud services could be beneficial to huge numbers of people on the planet, and would also give Google the sort of infrastructure level access to data that they have seemed to enjoy having in the past.
'The light comes in through a barrel structure, pointed at the Earth, and is bounced around by a series of mirrors, before being focused onto a CCD sensor.
Hmmmm, some kind of "barrel structure" and "bouncing light around with a series of mirrors". That all sounds pretty futuristic. And here I thought they could get by with just using something like a telescope.
Unfortunately, the public will be allowed only half that image quality, the best being reserved for the U.S. military.
This is somewhat to be expected for things like GPS (at least if you ignore that the taxpayers are the ones paying for it). But why is this the case when the instruments are being financed by a private company. Or, to look at it another way, the photos fall into two general categories: those outside the U.S.A. and those inside the U.S.A. It is hard to understand that our military would have many problems with us getting the best images available for locations outside the U.S.A. But it is even harder to understand that the military should get better images of the U.S.A. through Google than we can get ourselves. At least in times of peace and while they claim to not be at war with their own citizens. They have their own spy satellites for the super high resolution images (and don't kid yourself that they don't use them). So how and why has it been decided that we are to get degraded images from a private company when we could get better?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Another reason to plant more trees.
Google's primary initial funder = InQtel = CIA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
So how exactly does this 0.5 meter resolution compare to the current resolution on google's sattelite pics? Seems to me like the current pics have pixels thinner than 0.5 meters... I feel like I am missing something? I don't really know much about photography, so maybe someone can fill me in.
Just a guess, It might be more of a vertical integration answer than a quality of your local pictures one.
If they have to get their map data from someone else, at what ever most-recent time is available, at what ever resolution is available-- it might be nicer to get more regular dumps data you have more control over from the same satellite.
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee."
Not cool BBC, not cool.
In many (most?) developed western areas the images are from planes, not satellites. There is a great deal of high-res aerial photography on the open market and Google has used much.
The development being discussed in the article will benefit outlying areas and places where having temporal density is useful.
"“Once a year they pick cities like Denver or London and rescan them and they get it into their database – how often Google buys those images and updates its maps, is up to them.”
I'm surprised that Google is still buying DigitalGlobe imagery for the continental USA, ESPECIALLY for major metropolitan areas.
Most states have state-level orthoimagery collection programs, and as a result, there is high-quality aerial imagery significantly exceeding these satellites in quality over most of the USA, especially in metropolitan areas.
For example, New York State has 2 foot (24 inch) resolution across the entire state (only slightly worse than DigitalGlobe's best quality available), and over much of the state has 1 foot (12 inch) and even 0.5 foot (6 inch) resolution, the latter of which is better than what DG offers government customers. This data is under similar extremely permissive licensing to most other government GIS data such as TIGER. (Anyone can download NYGIS orthoimagery, and this same imagery is what Google uses for Maps/Earth for "satellite" which is really "aerial")
Pennsylvania has similar quality statewide imagery. Same for New Jersey (1 foot in the case of NJ).
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
most close in google photos are taken via aerial photography.
Dick Name System?
Looks like new and cool revenue stream for Google. Are they becoming military contractor for war criminals^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HUS Army ?
That means it's probably safe to assume the ones we're not allowed to know of are substantially better than that.
Congratulations, your writing instantly caused me to recollect a theorem that I haven't thought about in over 15 years: "The Earth has 4 days in one 24 hr cycle". Check it out, you might appreciate this work and learn a thing or two about effective argumentation style. #timecube
What would happen if a civilian entity launched high res sats and allowed civilians to use it at the highest res.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Am I the only person who considers it interesting that DigitalGlobe is prevented from selling high resolution images by the US while state governments are practically giving away even higher resolution images. This kind of crap is why conspiracy theories are so common. Though, my bets on good old government incompetence.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
what the hell does US militairy have to do with satelites being designed and payed for by google? the militairy doesn't have anything to say about what is allowed or not..
or get Google Translate to do it for you:
http://translate.google.com/tr...