Capella Space Defends High-Resolution Satellite Photos Described as 'Eerily Observant' (inputmag.com) 79
"A new satellite from Capella Space was described as "pretty creepy" by Bustle's technology site Input:
Like other hunks of metal currently orbiting Earth, the Capella-2 satellite's onboard radar system makes it capable of producing ludicrously high-resolution visuals from its data. More unconventional is the service Capella has launched to match: the government or private customers can, at any time, request a view of anything on the planet that's visible from the sky...
The Capella-2's system of cameras and sensors is nothing short of magnificent. The satellite uses something called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a technology used by NASA since the 1970s, to detect the Earth's surface through even the densest of clouds. SAR sends a 9.65 GHz radio signal toward the Earth and interprets the signal as it returns, using that data to form a visual... The Capella-2 is now the highest-resolution commercial SAR satellite in the world, capable of 50 cm x 50 cm resolution imaging. Other satellites are only capable of resolution up to about five meters....
Once Capella's full squadron of satellites is airborne, the company will have the ability to quickly snap views of just about any place in the world. That power could quickly be abused if left unchecked.
The article notes Capella already has a contract with the U.S. Air Force, adding "It's not much of a stretch to imagine high-resolution SAR technology turning into a tool for national surveillance...
"Right now there's just one Capella-2 satellite roaming around in the atmosphere, so that functionality is somewhat limited. Capella plans to launch six additional satellites with similar capabilities in the next year."
In response on Friday Capella Space penned a blog post reminding readers that their satellite "does not see through buildings," and that at 50-centimeter resolution "What it cannot do...is see people, license plates or reveal any personally identifiable information. Unlike other technologies that have recently been under scrutiny for privacy infringement such as cell phone geolocation data or automatic license plate readers, SAR imaging specializes in a macro view of the world to see the general patterns of life.
"Our company was founded on the belief that technology in space can significantly benefit life on Earth, and invading privacy does not help that mission. Part of that also means thoroughly vetting our customers and partners to ensure they will use our information for ethical purposes."
The Capella-2's system of cameras and sensors is nothing short of magnificent. The satellite uses something called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a technology used by NASA since the 1970s, to detect the Earth's surface through even the densest of clouds. SAR sends a 9.65 GHz radio signal toward the Earth and interprets the signal as it returns, using that data to form a visual... The Capella-2 is now the highest-resolution commercial SAR satellite in the world, capable of 50 cm x 50 cm resolution imaging. Other satellites are only capable of resolution up to about five meters....
Once Capella's full squadron of satellites is airborne, the company will have the ability to quickly snap views of just about any place in the world. That power could quickly be abused if left unchecked.
The article notes Capella already has a contract with the U.S. Air Force, adding "It's not much of a stretch to imagine high-resolution SAR technology turning into a tool for national surveillance...
"Right now there's just one Capella-2 satellite roaming around in the atmosphere, so that functionality is somewhat limited. Capella plans to launch six additional satellites with similar capabilities in the next year."
In response on Friday Capella Space penned a blog post reminding readers that their satellite "does not see through buildings," and that at 50-centimeter resolution "What it cannot do...is see people, license plates or reveal any personally identifiable information. Unlike other technologies that have recently been under scrutiny for privacy infringement such as cell phone geolocation data or automatic license plate readers, SAR imaging specializes in a macro view of the world to see the general patterns of life.
"Our company was founded on the belief that technology in space can significantly benefit life on Earth, and invading privacy does not help that mission. Part of that also means thoroughly vetting our customers and partners to ensure they will use our information for ethical purposes."
Cops can paint the car roofs. (Score:2, Interesting)
Once street cops have access to this technology, I figure it will take the police about one month to find:
A can of 'clear' Ultraviolet / Infrared paint that humans can not see, that they can easily draw a number onto the hood of any car.
Before we know it every car the cops are interested with will have something like NYCHRE1032 written on the hood in ultraviolet or infrared paint.
Probably using stencils.
Re:Cops can paint the car roofs. (Score:4, Informative)
That, and needs a 20 foot wide hood (Score:2)
Also, OP's plan requires that your hood is 20 feet wide.
Correction: 60-140 feet wide (Score:2)
I use woke up and I hit submit before thinking I through.
At 20 feet wide, with this resolution, the number painted on the hood would just look like a stripe - you couldn't read the numbers. At 60-80 feet wide there would be a chance to read it if the car happened to be oriented and aligned just right with the satellite. Since it's just as likely that it would be at an odd angle, figure a 140-foot wide hood to reliably read the characters they mentioned.
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So you want to be careful buying that Hummer...
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Lol what about the number size readable by 50cm resolution!?
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Well, this technology is radar-based, so I don't think what you described would be of any use here, but it is interesting, as the same could be used with optical satellites. Of course, they get nearly the same thing already by having plate-reading cameras on police cars and on fixed mounts. It's just a matter of time before they take all the cameras now used instead of induction sensors for traffic lights and have them record every license plate that goes by.
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Radar based, no problem, pick up the signal, amplify it and broadcast it back. I am sure other countries are likely to be a bit more aggressive, point a radar laser at it and fry the antennae's, the more sensitive the equipment the far more vulnerable it becomes.
I'll bet it most useful function is becoming a target for anti-satellite systems that do not leave a trace, just a malfunctioning satellite. They had better learn to ask permission first before firing radars at people, else they will be begging for
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Your plan makes about as much sense as trying to fry someone's car radio by shining a flashlight at it. The frequencies for this radar (9GHz) and optical frequencies (400,000GHz - 800,000GHz or 400THz - 800THz) from a laser are so far apart it won't do a thing to the electronics.
Using a laser seems unlikely to be an issue, but using a microwave dish could certainly cause some damage. I used to work on communication satellite dishes. around 20 years ago a couple of guys couldn't find the bird they were looking for using a 20 foot 1000 watt microwave dish. So they set it to transmit at full power and just started sweeping the sky. I don't recall which Telstar satellite they hit, but they blew out the transponders out of it.
Star-Band home satellite internet dishes from around that sam
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Given SCOTUS found that cops planting a GPS tracker on a car without a warrant was unconstitutional [huffpost.com], I've a hard time imagining any court, I've got to suspect that such actions you describe by 'street cops' would be similarly tossed out, even without a trip to the high court.
More interesting to me in such a case, would be the potential liability to the cop/force/city for property damage... as it would be hard to claim that such a 'tagging' would not damage the vehicle's paint in any way.
Re:Cops can paint the car roofs. (Score:5, Informative)
Scalia was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomayor, but his reasoning met stiff opposition from Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote a separate concurrence on behalf of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan.
5-4 and 2 of the 5 have since been replaced.
Re: Cops can paint the car roofs. (Score:1)
You are black-eyedly assuming they are gonna tell the judge, unlike that one idiot that did, and is now laughed at by the rest of the cop gang.
You use it to "find" other "evidence", and present *that* to the judge. Duh!
Judge: How the hell did you know this New York baby snatcher was walking down rural Wisconsin that exact day, to request this gas station's surveillance camera footage?
Copper: Well, ya know, your honor, our colleage just happened to be on holiday at the exact same one-steet town that exact da
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Already warrants are issued on the basis of anonymous tips, which in one local case turned out to be the cop's girlfriend reading a script. They were caught because they were stupid enough to use her personal cellphone, but not all cops are that dumb.
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You give the cops far too much credit.
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Before we know it every car the cops are interested with will have something like NYCHRE1032 written on the hood in ultraviolet or infrared paint.
To what ends?
Cars already have one, if not two, unique identifiers affixed to them which are automatically scanned and logged dozens if not hundreds of times at known fixed locations along average driving routes.
The occupants of the car are also all likely carrying radio transmitters broadcasting a uniquely identifiable code which is nearly always within range of 1-4 transceivers recording that ID along with a signal strength measurement.
Both of those have their logging data updated in real time, unlike a s
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I am interested in your idea that radar can read UV or infrared light, and also that a 50 cm resolution can read a number more than 4 digits on a car hood
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Re: Cops can paint the car roofs. (Score:2)
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Did you know that your car already has alpha-numeric identifiers affixed to the front and back of the vehicle? They are even visible to humans!
Who's on first? (Score:2)
The article notes Capella already has a contract with the U.S. Air Force, adding "It's not much of a stretch to imagine high-resolution SAR technology turning into a tool for national surveillance...
You mean it isn't already?
Re: Who's on first? (Score:1)
It is. Has been for decades.
The writer recieved an award for most black-eyed, gullible, "everyone telling me something that is not comforting, is a conspiracy theorists, and those are all conspiring against me" conspiracy theorist on the planet. And they checked. ;)
Like I said before... (Score:1)
Once Capella's full squadron of satellites is airborne, the company will have the ability to quickly snap views of just about any place in the world. That power could quickly be abused if left unchecked
.... privacy rapists gonna rape.
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Once Capella's full squadron of satellites is airborne, the company will have the ability to quickly snap views of just about any place in the world. That power could quickly be abused if left unchecked
.... privacy rapists gonna rape.
If you, or anything, is in the open, there is no expectation of privacy. If the satellite can capture a picture of you picking your nose at a picnic table a park, so can everyone around you.
Collects topographical information (Score:5, Informative)
What this really does is collect topographical information. Seriously, it's just measuring how long it takes for the signal to bounce back to the satellite. With a resolution of 50 cm^2 it can identify buildings/structures, cars/trucks and maybe if there a person in a specific spot. This definitely a good intelligence gather and scientific research tool but it has a limited set of applications.
The real question is how large of an area can it capture at once and how many are being deployed. If a single satellite can continuously capture 1000km^2 all at once then yes, that's a problem because with that you could track every vehicle, including airplanes (which would occasionally obscure it's sight). If they are also launching a large fleet then they could have the capability to monitor the every landmass on Earth.
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This is exactly what I was thinking, at least until I saw the magical phrase denying that "personally identifiable information" can be found. That is one of the biggest lies in tech, and if a company uses it there is no reason to contemplate their sense of ethics any further. They are evil and they are liars, full stop.
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I think it is morally worse to lie and/or bullshit people than to remain silent. Not that society agrees with me. Heh, come to think of it, people will SAY they demand honesty, but never hesitate to support the politician on "their side" when they lie.
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Maybe there are people in society that agree with you, but the radar engineers know that this resolution is not going to yield images that contain personally identifiable information. Unless you write your name in 50 cm high letters. Made of 3D metal.
If "they" identify your car (by reading the license plate with a ground-mounted camera), they can track you by satellite if they have enough continuous coverage. If not, the track will break in the 30 seconds after the satellite goes past and you get lost in tr
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you could track every vehicle, including airplanes
That would be wonderful. Keep them from crashing into each other. Like combining GPS with TCAS. We can automate air traffic control.
When they have a lot of them up, I'm sure they'll have the resolution down to 5cm or better. The self driving cars will be less likely to bump into people or drive off a cliff.
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SAR explicitly does not collect topographic information. In fact, you need a priori topographic information or you can't correctly locate the pixels in the image - topography becomes horizontal shifts unless adjusted for. The images they show are just brightness of the reflected radar signal.
You need more than one range measurement to reconstruct topography, for example via InSAR (which they mention as a future project).
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It sends a signal and records how long it takes for that signal to bounce back. This provides the information needed to calculate the distance from it's orbit. This creates a record of the relief, the three-dimensional quality of the surface. I don't know what you would call that if you don't call that topographical data.
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A person at one distance on the ground and the top of a tower at a larger distance along the ground will both appear to be at the same range from the satellite - see for reference the concept of "layover". How do you differentiate these to create your topo map?
To reconstruct topography, you need a range measurement plus the full set of angles at which that range measurement was taken. SAR gives you the angle relative to the direction of travel but not perpendicular to that, so there's not enough information
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No, it gives you pixel brightness.
You're better off trying to cross-reference with the public LIDAR data for topography. https://www.usgs.gov/special-t... [usgs.gov]
They're not using a sonar type technique, obviously; you can get a lot more information if instead of measuring the timing of the response, like sonar, you instead measure the strength of the response, like in a camera. That's why the images look like camera images. That's why they have such high resolution even though they're using 108kg micro-satellites.
"see the general patterns of life" is PII (Score:2)
So what? (Score:1)
Why are fools afraid of this? Here's an idea, metal roof + second amendment. Now what?
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OK, what kind of gun do you have that can reach LEO? And why are you afraid of something with resolution of only half a meter? Even the Eye In The Sky satellites in the 1970s had better resolution than that.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
His fart hole.
Trust me. No satellite is going to survive that rising-methane attack! ;)
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metal roof + second amendment = leaky roof
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I want the rifle sight version of this technology! It would be awesome for hunting game in cover.
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How would it be awesome for hunting game in cover? And you know you can buy handheld radar, right? You just need to pay some cash for it, but not as much as a satellite in orbit.
This has some serous weaponizing use (Score:4, Informative)
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Landsat I, launched in 1972, created sufficiently accurate maps for nuclear warhead guidance. I'm quite sure there were military programs prior to that which made even more accurate maps.
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I suppose that might be necessary since cities and military bases are moving around all the time. /s
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There are numerous sources of similar data available for GIS nerds.
I generate my own topo maps, it is easy and the free data is awesome.
Odd (Score:5, Insightful)
What an odd thing to be afraid of: a radar sat with 50 cm resolution. It maps the heights of things that don't move very fast.
Never mind the multiple Hubble telescopes, pointed down, that have been in orbit for decades, image in the optical and infrared, and can read your newspaper if they want.
Re: Odd (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes I was exaggerating. Still, the resolution is a hell of a lot better than 50 cm, and the fundamental limit is atmospheric interference because building a bigger mirror is a matter of having enough money.
On the other hand, radar is limited by the wavelength, which is why you have to play games with SAR.
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That's the first thing I thought.
Anybody in the world can already go to Google Maps and look at my own back yard with a resolution that looks to be about 10cm (probably taken from a low-tech airplane). You can even zoom around in multiple directions in a crappy AI-generated 3D model of my property.
Anyone can also pull up StreetView to see an approximately 3cm resolution image of my front yard and house.
Those are already kind of creepy. What's the big deal with *this* satellite?
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What's the big deal with *this* satellite?
Nothing. Some people just love inventing boogiemen. And looking down on others with derision and pity, because, oh you fool, can't you see the vast conspiracies that I can so clearly see? I see more than a few posts here in that vein.
It's not that overly broad surveillance isn't a concern. It's just that THIS tool really has nothing to do with that.
THIS *F*U*D* BROUGHT TO YOU BY: (Score:2)
Capella's competitors!
Or so I thought until I read the article because I hadn't thought anyone had not heard of SAR by now; obviously these idiots haven't. I've never heard of "Input Magazine" until now either, and will promptly forget it after zipping through the awful pages.
The government is jealous (Score:4, Informative)
What's different is that this is nearly real time. The government has had this capability for decades, to watch *us*. They are likely less happy that ordinary citizens can now watch *them*. Bet: the US government will try to force filters, whereby they can deny looks at certain places at certain times.
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It's got a resolution of half a meter, the only "them" you're going to be able to watch might be crowd.
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It might be useful for those lawyers who sue government contractors for stealing from the government.
And for busting people who abuse the government car pool.
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If you live in a GDPR country you can ask them to remove that data from where you live. My house is a blur on Street View too.
Re: Odd (Score:2)
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Comments like this show why the US doesn't really have anything to worry about from the EU when it comes to international economic leadership. Even when their privacy isn't endangered, they're ready to attack business over it. And they don't succeed at actually having more privacy, I can still pay $25 for their life story and they never even knew it happened.
It helps with online services offered for "free" to the general public. Only. Yet it lashes out at everything that has a computer and isn't from China.
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What's the big deal with *this* satellite?
It can see you at night, and under a storm cloud. There is no safe time to bury the bodies. They're mad, their dreams and future plans are crashing down around them!
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SAR doesn't map the heights of anything, regardless of how fast it's moving. Range from one point by itself is not enough to reconstruct the 3D location of the surface.
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I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Synthetic aperture radar is primarily used to make topographic maps. It is radar, which measures the distance to things, combined with interferometry, which lets you overcome the inconveniently large wavelength of radio waves and the limited aperture available for radar dishes on airplanes (where it originated) and on satellites.
Regular interferometry combines signals from multiple receivers separated in space. SAR combines signals from the same receiver at differ
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You're confusing SAR for InSAR, and Capella is not doing InSAR in the linked images. They do refer to it on their technology page, but it sounds like it's still a work in progress and they don't present any InSAR results.
https://www.capellaspace.com/c... [capellaspace.com]
Classic radar gives you one measurement - range. SAR uses aperture synthesis (i.e. antenna arrays i.e. interferometry) in the direction of travel to focus in azimuth, giving you a flat 2D focused image. That's insufficient information to get heights, however
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No, I'm not. Interferometric SAR adds conventional interferometry between two spatially separated receivers to regular SAR, which is interferometry between serial measurements from a moving receiver. It can improve resolution in the direction perpendicular to the direction of travel. If Capella is claiming 50x50 cm "realtime" resolution then presumably they are doing something of the kind.
I'm not sure why you think range from a satellite doesn't give you ground height.
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Agreed.
Technically true, but that's never what it's used for in satellite missions. Off the top of my head, SRTM, Tandem-X, SIR-C, and Magellan all used InSAR (be it single-pass or repeat-pass) specifically to extract topography, not for resolution.
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What an odd thing to be afraid of: a radar sat with 50 cm resolution.
Wait for it to be used in dick measuring contests.
(That's assuming the EM waves go through your pants and bounce off your junk.)
"resolution [...] highest in the world" (Score:3)
*laughs in CIA, FSB, Mossad, whatever China's is named, etc... loudly ... pointing with fingers ... tears streaming down its face*
Our company was founded on the belief (Score:2)
And with that they rid themselves of responsibility for the consequences for authoritarian uses of their tech.
They have to leave something for v2.0 (Score:3)
In response on Friday Capella Space penned a blog post reminding readers that their satellite "does not see through buildings,"
The world has slowly become filled with James Bond villains, while we all just enjoy our unlimited ability to play candy crush or whatever. Awesome.
I can't breathe (Score:2)
"Right now there's just one Capella-2 satellite roaming around in the atmosphere"
Seriously? It's up at 525km (326 miles)....that's well beyond the atmosphere.
Eerily observant (Score:1)
That phrase "eerily observant" makes me wonder if they have shots of boats and people on Lake Erie, or they caught The Donald, putting on his wig, or applying his spray on sun-tan.
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I have some Radarsat 1 images from 15 years ago on a hard drive in my cellar. Anybody could buy them. You can see roads and different crops, maybe boats, but not even Donald's wig is big enough to see. Radar doesn't give you optical resolution. And it's 300 miles away.
Oh Really. (Score:2)
It's not much of a stretch to imagine high-resolution SAR technology turning into a tool for national surveillance...
Is this a joke? Obviously it already is, someone funded it.
"does not see through buildings,"
That's a different technology.
Air Sattelites (Score:3)
"Right now there's just one Capella-2 satellite roaming around in the atmosphere."
Wow! These are really in Low earth Orbit!...