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Space Science

Commercial Digital Imaging of the Earth 13

Posted by michael from the still-waiting-for-the-first-webcam-in-space dept.
n7lyg writes "EarthWatch, Inc. is launching a new satellite which will provide 61-centimeter resolution B&w images and 2.5-meter color resolution. The QuickBird 2 will be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit by a Boeing Delta II rocket and provied the highest-resolution commercial images anywhaer by the end of this year. They currently provide reprocessed Landsat 7 images, along with special-order images (you specify the lat/long to provied). So, current price is $500 for a 1-degree tile, all taken from Landsat 7 images. No information on whether the prices for QuickBird images will be more or less expensive."
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Commercial Digital Imaging of the Earth More

Commercial Digital Imaging of the Earth

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  • or can you order pics of anywhere?...
    say a nude beach or the house of someone you don't like.

    --
    Spelling by m-w.com [m-w.com].

  • Hopefully, using satellite photographs of this resolution could help reduce the chance of such mistakes happening again.

    Well, this satellite may help Mexico's situation a little bit, if they only use the b&w images (at the 61cm resolution). Aerial photos (from an airplane) are typically about 1 meter resolution.

    Sidenote: Even in the US, property tax descriptions can never be relyed upon for land surveying purposes due to their oftentimes wild inaccuracies.

  • Lot's of pictures of my house.
  • No, but it is synched with the earth via the foundation.
  • Of course, at 61-cm resolution, you won't be able to tell whether somebody is clothed or nude, but the best part is all in the mind anyway.

  • Why spend $500 a time, when the whole lot will probably end up being used as texturemaps on Microsloth Flightsim 2010?
  • Here in Mexico, we're paying a yearly property tax, which (strangely enough) depends on the exact size of the property. However, until recently those measurements have been made by taking pictures from an airplane. There have been several complaints of mistakes done while measuring.

    Hopefully, using satellite photographs of this resolution could help reduce the chance of such mistakes happening again.
    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
  • Space Imaging and EarthWatch will provide 1m panchromatic resolution of anywhere on the earth's surface, but the futility of imaging specific individuals is twofold... Spatial resolution at >.10m is insufficient to determine gender of most individuals... (Graffen: 2001 [Remote Sensing Applications, St. John's Griffin, pub.]). And more importantly to all the big-brother-phobes is that the _temporal_ resolution of most polar orbiting satelites is around three weeks (commercial) or three days (HIGH priority military). Even with off-nadir viewing capability (which Quickbird will almost certianly have) most RS satelites take around 80 minutes to orbit the earth and sweep 15 degrees at a time. About 80% of the shots we get off here at the University are photogrammetrically unreliable because the sensor ranged too far oblique. Couple that with uncooperative cloud cover and darkness (if imaging in panchromatic) and you have a whole host of problems. So as long as you keep your meth lab in the trunk of your car... by the way, here's an example of what happens to people at 1m res. http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/ioweek/archive /iow012401/iow012401.htm the_Upsetter
  • Why, is your house sun-synchronous?
  • Wouldn't it make more sense to charge based on square miles of kilometers (or whatever area measurement makes the most sense)? Finns and Canucks seem to be grossly overcharged compared to Nauruans.

    Dancin Santa
  • You can have some free images on terraserver [terraserver.com] or globexplorer [globexporer.com]
    ----
  • And how much of this flight-time will be bought up by the government to spy on us Americans? I can see it now, I search for the words "Potassium Nitrate" in google and the next thing i know the plane is tracking me from afar.

    Better yet, I used to have an 18-foot Sat. dish and receive news channel remote broadcasts before they hit the studio, you'd be amazed at what camera men shine their camera's on when they are not on the air (you guessed it, boobs). I can't wait to see what these guys are gonna do with their camera free-time.

    My question is, who's watching the watchers?
    --
    He had come like a thief in the night,
  • shesh! such anger! sure, someone trying to give away what isn't theirs is not right, but a post filled with obsenities and personal attacks is not the answer. in fact from his post, we can't even be sure that his company holds any copyrights on the images. don't really know how they could. or do they have any regulations in his contract that prohibit the release of infromation for free that otherwise would cost $$$ ?

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