The Sharpest Ever Global Earth Map

Roland Piquepaille writes "The GLOBCOVER project, started by the European Space Agency (ESA), has a very simple goal. It will create the most detailed portrait of the Earth's land surface with a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map. The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite. To create this sharp map, the GLOBCOVER project will analyze about 20 terabytes of data gathered by the European satellite. When it's completed, the map will have numerous uses, 'including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts.'"

Google it up!

[Keck]

Now when this is incorporated into maps.google.com I'll be even happier..

Re:Google it up!

[Uruk]

And what about Area 51, the Green Zone in Baghdad, and all of the nifty places on the earth that we don't typically get to see via satellite photos?

How do they filter those images out, anyway? These satellites have much better views than the typical U2 spy plane - is this a tacit agreement between defense and the satellite operating company, or does the defense department get a crack at the images before they're released to the public?

Re:Get Nasa WorldWind

[Renegade Lisp]

Thanks for that reply.

You could download Nasa Worldwind software for free.

Doesn't run on free operating systems though... Doesn't let you even look at the source code. But I still applaud NASA for such a great project. That's really the right spirit -- well almost :-).

On the other hand, ESA has always been stingy in giving access to data. It took them a while to release Titan images; as opposed to Nasa who makes them available almost instanteneously.
I guess thats the difference between the cultures!

Looks like it. But surely, that's a difference between space-organisation cultures, not so much society in general. Europe tends to be very free-software friendly these days -- rather more so than the US. Makes it even more sad that ESA doesn't really seem to get it.

Re:Get Nasa WorldWind

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, ESA's problem isn't that they're stingy with data, they're just incompetant when it comes to timely data distribution. They have problems getting data even to the people who DO pay for it. The Envisat mission has been plagued by this since day one.

Re:'hello mum'

[sootman]

"The satellite imagery for this is being recorded at a resolution of 300 m. For comparison, the most zoomed in you can get on GoogleMaps is 2 m per a pixel."

If that's the case, why does the article say it has "a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map"? Were the images that Google uses from aerial photography--that is, pics taken from airplanes, not satellites? I'm confused here.

Re:Sharpest Map?

[Anonymous Coward]

beayse the high resolution imaging spectrometer would give you an ultraviolet-albedo image of the earth, similarly the low-resolution one would give you a heat dispersal map on of the earth.

resolution means more than pixels in 95% of scientific applications.

Re:I want my planet!

[d-Orb]

You see, I work with data from both ESA and NASA for Earth Observation. And many of the people of the communities which would be served by these data are annoyed by the attitude. The way NASA works is to produce a number of products for scientific and research based work, and chuck'em into some web site. You go and download. ESA, on the other hand, requires you to write a proposal, which is peer reviewed and blah blah blah. Eventually, they send you a bunch of CDs with the data you didn't want, 2 years later than expected and to an address in Italy when you wanted them in the UK (personal experience). They claim the peer review stage and proposal submission help to show decision makers (politicos) in member states the useful and brilliant things people do with the technology they invested their cash on. The result is an infrautilisation of the ESA data, or it's very limited use in research environments.

On the other hand, NASA gives the data away, people download it, piss about with it for a few days, and from time to time, you get businesses using it, people realising they can get a paper out of it... Essentially, it gets used.

To be fair with ESA, they are making efforts to streamline the processes, but management seems to work that way. Due to its transnational nature, ESA is a bit like the EU: no country wants to pay in, but everybody wants subsidies, contracts... ESA is just the same, which is sad. A far stronger scientific presence at the top would greatly improve things...