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Technology

U.S. Allows Sale of Half-Meter Satellite Photos 119

Posted by Hemos from the really-really-close dept.
kreinsch writes "According to an article in today's Washington Post, the U.S. Government quietly granted a license to Space Imaging, Inc. two weeks ago to allow the sale of satellite photos with half-meter resolution, as compared to the current one-meter resolution available." As the article points out, this effectively ends the monopoly the spy agencies had on this high-end imagery.
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U.S. Allows Sale of Half-Meter Satellite Photos More

U.S. Allows Sale of Half-Meter Satellite Photos

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  • Re:Half Meter Resolution (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually you can look at Stockholm (Sweden) at .25 meter resolution right now. And even at that resolution it's hard to se an object of that size....

    http://www.lantmateriet.com/sbindex.htm

    (in swedish, but should be useful anyway)

  • SAR (Score:1)

    by aprentic ( 1832 )
    I hate argue with someone of such grand intelect as yourself but SAR is Synthetic Aperature Radar. SAR does involve image resolution enhancement but in the case of SAR it seems to be more along the lines of optimizing sweep ranges and frequencies for single shot images.
  • > I find it strange that these companies are based > on the US in the first place.

    > Why wouldn't they move to another country where > no limits to satellite image resolution exist?

    Because:

    1. Moving to another country is a very chancy and expensive proposition, and

    2. Unlike naif idiots, these companies realize that any country that doesn't have agreements with the US is also un-bloody-likely to be any good for their business. Some libertarian paradises without such agreements include North Korea, Iraq and Russia.

    Will people here get their head out of their ass or, equivalently, out of _Atlas_Shrugged_ and look around, please?
  • > I find it strange that these companies are based
    > on the US in the first place.

    > Why wouldn't they move to another country where
    > no limits to satellite image resolution exist?

    Are you implying that the USA is the ONLY country that restricts public access to satellite data? Because if you are, you're completely off-base. If, on the other hand, you're implying that a business operated out of another country can get unlimited access to any US satellite data they desire, you're STILL completely off-base.

    The US Fed Gov't has National Security concerns about other countries benefiting from OUR satellite technology and intelligence, so they restrict (or, restrictED) public consumption to relatively low-res (and thus tactically insignificant) data. It doesn't matter WHERE a business is located - if the Fed doesn't grant them access to data, they aren't getting it.

    The US has excellent reconaisance and mapping satellites in orbit, but other countries are lagging far behind our level of tech and coverage. Just moving the company to another country doesn't mean that company would get access to the SAME tech in orbit, just under a different flag. If you want hi-res, you get it from the USA; if you want grainy low-res pics, multitudes of nations have acceptable satellites in orbit.
  • Bull, it just means they've upgraded enough in the interim, that they don't care.

    Heck, they likely have tech that could count the dandruff flakes on your shirt, these days.
  • - high flying drone aircraft

    - one of those ugly two-rotor drone mini-helicopter things

    - telescopic lens on a nearby building

    - parabolic mike on a nearby building

    - phone taps
  • get a better browser, freak!
    ---
  • No. I'm being a funny bastard but I was referring to high-precision missiles. If you know how this stuff works then you'll need a sattelite showing the coordinate system and pictures of the place. A half-meter resolution would be exactly the minimum to achieve such task. This way you can detect windows, doors, chimneys and other details that may be important for damage calculation.

    Ok Troll me. But dear feminist Moderator. I am not bashing my ex-wife as a woman. No. In fact she deserves a missile for something much worser.
  • Now I only need a missile...
    Where is the house of my ex-wife?
  • I find it strange that these companies are based on the US in the first place.

    Why wouldn't they move to another country where no limits to satellite image resolution exist?

    My bet is that image resolution doesn't really affect their current business and they're not very open to the possibilities of higher resolution imaging.

    Flavio
  • Every pixel in that picture becomes four. Each car in that picture seems to have around six pixels. Twenty-four pixels doesn't seem enough to say much about a car, but maybe you could say SOMETHING.
  • Did you not see "Enemy Of The State?"
    A trifle bit of flim, but they (the spooks) had super hi res tracking satellites. Made for a fun afternoon out.

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • ...just imagine what kind of resolution they have for themselves :>
  • Not true. To get a 5-mm-resolution 500x500 image from a height of 300 km, you'd have to have a field of view of 0.03 arc seconds. For comparison, atmospheric turbulence normally makes it pointless to try to make telescopic images with fields of view of less than about 1000 arc seconds. That's why the Hubble Space Telescope got built -- to do astronomy without that nasty atmosphere in the way.

    To sample a 5mm spot at a height of 300km you we'll need 1.7e-3 arcsec pixels. A 500x500 detector will give you a field of .86 arcsec. Currently using interferometry you can achieve 1e-3 arcsec but your field is very small (~10x resolution). The main problem with interferomtry is contrast. But adaptive optics (AO) gets high contrast but at lower angular resolutions. Current "disclosed military" AO systems are able to observe from the ground satelites with angular resolutions of ~.07arcsec. This is ~10cm at a height of 300km.

  • Actually, turning Hubble around is a pretty accurate description of the NRO satellites. The idea is to cram a mirror as large as can be carried by current launch vehicles. Hubble is 2.4 meters, so it's a pretty good guess that recon birds are around this size. To get higher resolution, you need a bigger mirror. Keyhole sats have a resolution of around 10 centimeters. to get 5 centimeter resolution, you would need an objective twice as large, which wouldn't fit in a launch vehicle, not if it was a one piece mirror. objectives much larger than current ones aren't very practical, something 2x larger could be 10x heavier, and resolution of 10cm is fine for most military needs. sure, it would be cool if you could read a license plate from orbit, but why would you want to? granted, the military does seem to buy lots of stuff just because of the coolness factor, but at some point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, even for the pentagon (or kremlin, or mossad, MI5 or whatever). And your point about atmospheric disturbances is correct as well, in some cases, these satellites are limited to performance 10x worse that their maximum theoretical resolution because of atmospheric turbulence. and performance drops to 0% if the target is obscured by cloud cover.

    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    Soylent Foods, Inc.
  • There is technology in development (already exists for terrestrial telescopes) called very long baseline interferometry. it's a widely used technique in radio astronomy, and is one of the latest things in visible/infrared observing. basically, you can combine the images from 2 widely separated apertures and the resulting resolution is the same as for a single aperture equal in diameter to the distance separating your two small apertures. there are plans to launch some of the interferomters for astronomical observation using baselines from 1-10km. it is likely that instruments like this can be used in the opposite direction, for terrestrial recon from space (and, perhaps already are). even a 50 meter baseline at orbits aroind 700 km would give you sub-centimeter resolution. of course, taking into account the other limitations of satellites at this altitude, that in itself probably wouldn't be very useful. the real kicker would be that this would allow imaging from geostationary orbits, so you could continuously cover the entire globe with a fleet of maybe 20 or so satellites, instant data on any location on earth, from several different angles, anytime you want it. It might even make aerial recon obsolete. pure speculation, of course, but i think this might be the most interesting explanation for the retirement of the SR-71 fleet. it would certainly be a more elegant solution than the so called aurora spyplane.

    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    Soylent Foods, Inc.
  • actually, that is exactly what most of these NRO satellites are, Hubble-class telescopes pointed at the ground. the best ones currently have a resolution of around 10 centimeters from normal altitudes( about 400-500 miles), so i'm sorry to tell you that the performance of Hubble isn't quite that impressive. see my earlier response to this thread for a more detailed description.

    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    Soylent Foods, Inc.
  • should have specified that.

    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    Soylent Foods, Inc.
  • Did I leave anyone out?

    Probably Israel, and almost certainly India.

    I think most of Western Europe would launch this sort of satellite on Ariane. IIRC, Germany has one (or more?) orbiting already.

  • If they don't allow US corporations the right to sell those hi-res photos, someone in another country will jump on the opportunity. E.g. Spot Image [spot.com], in France. IIRC, they're planning a sub-meter satellite somewhere in the next decade.

  • Let's see:
    Nasa and other US based companies (the one that launches of the 747)

    France

    Russia

    China

    Japan

    Did I leave anyone out?


    Israel?

    UK?

    There might be others... I have no clue, its just wild speculation on my part.

    On Second thought, I'm not feeling that wild, so it's just lazy speculation.

  • Gawd. (Score:1)

    by ff ( 35380 )
    High end imagery? Don't you mean imaging?
    Geez.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It simply means that an object of 19 inches can register in the image- and "register" simply means that a dot on the image might be brighter or darker depending on the overall colour of the object.

    Actually, it means that each pixel on the image represents 19 inches on the earth.

  • I think they maybe better, I have my self seen a picture that had been shot by a russian spy sat,
    you saw a man from above reading the PRAWDA and you could have read some headlines, if you had been able to read those cryllic letters....

    Michael
  • The idea of a fleet of geostationary orbiting spy satellites is a good idea but diplomatically impossible. Everyone would bitch and it would cause lots of trouble. It would not be a system that could be done in secret. Everyone would know and every other country would bitch there way into a arms race.

    But I think what would work is the application of the Trojan horse theory to your concept. Lets say that the GPS satellites are really NRO satellites with GPS as the cover. Or maybe Iridium, that would explain the DoD's sudden desire to sing a exclusive use contract and the original owners of Iridium strongly suggesting the sale to a group of under biding airline executives. One must wonder....

    And anyway everyone knows that the aurora spyplane is just a cover for the governments secrete meetings with UFO's to learn the secrets of making spy/nav satellites.

    Craig Borchatdt
  • This is amazing.

    Finally, with half-meter resolution I can finally tell if my mom's left yet to pick me up from the high school!

    Now all I need to do is find a site wtih a 15-minute refresh of, say, the entire world. But just my house would be ok too. Starting tomorrow, I'm opening a fund to put a satellite right above my house.

    Donate! Come on, you know you want to. ;-)
    --
  • ©©©One more step to getting pictures of my ass taken from an orbiting satellite
  • Hey,
    That reminds me of the Monty Python skit "Blackmail". A TV show where they blackmail people with incriminating evidence. They basically ask the victims to pay them money not to reveal more evidence. Here's a sample (get more here [montypython.net])

    "And now: a letter, a hotel registration book, and a series of photographs, which could add up to divorce, premature retirement, and possible criminal proceedings for a company director in Bromsgrove. He's a freemason, and a conservative M.P., so Mr S. that's 3,000 pounds please to stop us from revealing: Your name, The name of the three other people involved, The youth organization to which they belonged, and the shop where you bought the equipment!"

    Good fun...

  • You shouldn't feel all THAT safe... it just means that the pictures They SELL are at 19 inch, the ones that they DON'T SELL are more interesting and most likely at a higher resolution... so better stay inside ;-)
  • The US has excellent reconaisance and mapping satellites in orbit, but other countries are lagging far behind our level of tech and coverage.

    I think currently India has the highest resolution publicly available satellite pictures. They launched their high-res observation sat a few years ago, so I might be wrong now though...



  • Funny, I think the Indian one was at most 1 meter resolution (probably less), so I assume they square the ratio (1m : 0.5m), since it is in two dimensions. Oh well, I was wrong then.

  • True, but if the sattelite were to take a picture at an angle that was perpendicular to the radius of the earth, there would be way to much atmosphere and refraction to get any decent resolution. Matt Newell
  • Unclassified half-meter imagery has been available for some time. Environmentalists have had it to view pine trees on Ft. Bragg for some endangered woodpecker.

    The gov't tends to classify imagery produced from gov't sources, whereas it has some limitations in classifiying imagery from commercial sources. But, if it is a US company producing this imagery, it should expect to have Uncle Sam oversight on what product it is putting out.

  • Namely, that this development should follow so closely on the long-awaited shutdown of the Chernobyl reactor.

    Why is it ironic? Because Chernobyl wasn't the first Soviet reactor to experience a serious accident; the Soviets had an even worse reactor accident more than a decade earlier, and they successfully covered it up. But by the time the Chernobyl incident occurred, spy satellites made that sort of cover-up impossible.

    joke: Now if only we could have had them overseeing the ballot-counting in Florida...

  • "As the article points out, this effectively ends the monopoly the spy agencies had on this high-end imagery. "

    Yeah, right... the military has had the ability to read the face of a watch from space for decades.
  • Now that the US Gov't has (finally) decided to let us see what they've had for ages, I only wonder how much control they'll put over what we look at. I'm guessing in that we won't be able to look at, say, NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain, but what about French bases in the Loire or the South? Or NATO bases at Rammstein? Or US Monitoring stations in New Zealand? Will access to high-level bases of friendly/Allied nations also be cut off from our view?

    I just have this bad feeling that foreign nations will bring to bear such heavy pressures on the Administration that all the fun stuff to look at closely will be blocked for "National Security Reasons." So that leaves National Parks, baseball games, and the Playboy Manion to order...

  • I also thought Norway has rockets as I was reading how the Russians freaked and thought it was a U.S.A nuclear launch when Norway launched something once.

    I think most of them never go into orbit, but are launched to study atmospheric conditions in high altitude over polar areas (read: northern lights (aurora borealis)).

    But if they really want to, they are probably capable of launching satellites as well. Note that there would be little reason for Norway to do this for military purposes, as we are just a puppet in the arms of NATO^H^H^H^HUSA when it comes to the military. You can read more about the launching facility at www.rocketrange.no [rocketrange.no].

  • Hm, so maybe I'm being a bit naive saying 'could be'. :-)
  • I'm pretty sure that 'monopoly' in the text is referring to 'spy agencies' monopoly on accessing this type of imagery, which has little to do with the commercial meaning of 'monopoly'. On to something completely different; what's to stop an commercial entity from launching a satellite with the capability to photograph US soil? Maybe the actual photographing would be legal, but the distribution would not?
  • Well, as for covering the same area continuously, this can be accomplished using an geosynchronous/geostationary orbit - which is already used for comms/TV/etc.

    However, to maintain the same position over earth, the satellite is positioned ca 22,300 miles out in space, which is a bit far out for effective photography :-)

    Apparently something called LEO (Low Earth Orbit) is used for imagery, a LEO being 200-500 miles out in space. In a LEO, the satellite must maintain a certain speed to counter earth's gravity. At this speed (17,000 mph), they can circle the earth in about 90 minutes.
  • oh shut up, i hate people such as yourself.

    Good and very polite argument.

    for starters, the "wife tanning" example is terrible

    Read http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/12/16/22182 09&cid=54

    second, seeing what's in your yard? please, anything that flies

    Come on... it's forbiden (and much more expensive) to a plane/chopter to fly over my house (I clarify it, it's forbiden to fly over the city) whithout a special permission.

    best that you'll see is maybe what kind of fountain Madonna has in her yard or something

    Or forbidden satellital TV antennas in some asiatic countries...

    --ricardo

  • This is a case where the guys who can tell you anything probably shouldn't. And anything you think you might know can't be confirmed.

    Which is just as it should be.
  • Oops, math mistake -- it's about 2 arc seconds, not 0.03 (forgot to convert radians to degrees). It doesn't affect the conclusion, though.
  • One more step to getting pictures of my girlfriend showering every night at .5 meters...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • So what your saying is that if a company can afford to spy on me wherever I go they should be alowed to? I don't think I'm being overly paranoid here, idustrial espionage, private investigation, and even stalking can be done with kind of equipment, and the government should have the right to at least keep some of it in check.

  • Of course, the license plate example is a little bit flawed: you couldn't see a license plate from directly overhead, and if the camera were oriented at a sufficient angle to see a license plate, you would quickly get away from optimal resolution because of increased distance to the target, and more importantly, increased thickness of the layer of atmosphere to see through.

    "They" would probably be able to make out the letters of the word "POLICE" on the top of a police cruiser. Or someone could be holding up the license plate for the satellite to see. ;-)

  • I will address some flaws that are not addressed with the previous reply's content.

    The problem with such assumptions is the weather. Imagine looking through a fog bank--you can't too well, and if it is thick fog, you can't at all. Now imagine being a satalite many miles away trying to look through all the clouds. Then we throw in the dust in the air, then other water vapor, and now we can throw in heat wave distortions (the mirage effect over hot pavement, or over a grill that "bends" the image in the other side). You can try to deal with the heat by shooting the picture at night, but then you loose much illumination. The ideal photography times are a cool morning, or just before sun set on a cool day when there is no cloud cover to 1.)block the shot, or 2.) absorb heat and keep the region warm (blanket effect). There is still dust and other space debris getting in your way, so it would be very difficult to actually read the date of a coin on the ground even if the Hubble and other sats could do such a thing in the first place.

    Macx
  • I'd have to stop spanking my monkey in the garden.

    They are probably more interested in things that threaten George's administration, and less interested in things like how you mistreat poor animals.

  • Next /. Poll: Whose abode do you want sat photos of?

    o CmdrTaco
    o Hemos
    o CowboyNeal
    o JonKatz
    o timothy
    o Cliff

    I'm betting JonKatz will win; a group of crazed /.'ers will invade his back yard, seeking to do him wrong. Jesse Jackson will be there, mumbling something incoherent about Hellmouth...


    --
  • I'd have to stop spanking my monkey in the garden. Like they said, 19 inch objects are clearly discernable. ;)
  • Half meter photos of Natalie Portman sunbathing topless on the beach! Kick ass!

  • No, that whole satellite imagery thing was just plain silly.

    First off, the satellite is travelling at thousands of miles per hour (relative to the ground), so the shot where they couldn't see Brill's face, because they were directly overhead was stupid, stupid, stupid. None of it was even remotely possible.
  • Yes, I've heard of infared, I've also heard that IR is reflected by clouds.
  • By taking mutiple, slightly offset immages of the same area you can increase the resolution by averaging overlapped values at particular positions.
    The actual algo is a bit more complicated but I don't remember it off hand.
    The problem is I think the process scales at n^2 so you need alot of processing and alot of pictures to really boost the resolution.
    But it is pretty easy to increase the resolution by a couple of factors.
  • Actually Chernobyl was publicized when Sweden discovered elevated radiation levels in the course of their regular monitoring (it's a bit ominious that nobody closer picked it up before.)

    It was trivial to figure out which way the winds were blowing & to contact researchers further upwind. It was fairly quickly realized that the source was in Eastern Europe & confirmed when a quick sat check of the nuke plant's thermal signature confirmed Chernobyl was running waaay hot.

    However none of this required any high-resolution photography, nor was it even visible-wavelength. Instead a fairly coarse IR shot was taken and compared with a recent one. A hundred percent-plus jump in heat from the foot-ball sized containment structure told the story.

    I dunno if the NATO folks were already aware but I suspect it wouldn't be hard to arrange automatic periodic monitoring of facilities with an flag raised when they suddenly change. While the obvious thing to watch would be armory's & such it wouldn't be terribly hard to add fuel-storage facilities, chemical plants, electricity generating stations, even reservoirs. Something changes temperature fast & you knew either a batallion of banks is rolling towards Germany or somewhere a dam has failed & there's now a large mudflat that was a lake yesterday...

    -- Michael

    ps Wonder if I could use the same tech to spot when a server goes down - some of the big-iron puts out a *lot* of heat...

  • Ha! (Score:2)

    by Art Tatum ( 6890 )
    As the article points out, this effectively ends the monopoly the spy agencies had on this high-end imagery.

    That's rich. You can bet that anytime the NSA, CIA, or DoD lets anybody see or use a technology, it's because it's out of date and has been replaced with something much more powerful.


  • If they're prepared to de-classify this level of resolution, what sort of resolution are they still keeping secret?

    Still, no matter how good spy sattelites get, I still reckon that, for the purpose of gathering visual intelligence the best imaging technology remains the Human Eyeball, Mk I.


    D.

  • The resolution doesn't have to be that good to differentiate adult males from adult females and children. There would be noticeable differences in height, proportions and mass.
  • You can only image to about half a wavelength.
    SAR radar peaks at tens of centimeter wavelength.
  • This month's issue on Popular Science has such a picture for you.
  • So far one single corporation was granted access to sell the photos. This does not end a monopoly, but rather looks like it would be starting one (regardless of the fact that they may claim they'll license others in the future, right now there's still only one).
  • It's POSSIBLE that other countries have higher resolution stuff, BUT it can ONLY be one of a hand full. Remember, the club that can launch a satelite to orbit is kinda small.

    Let's see:
    Nasa and other US based companies (the one that launches of the 747)

    France

    Russia

    China

    Japan

    Did I leave anyone out?
  • OK, They have been selling one meter images for a couple of years, and now have the OK to sell half meter. New sat? Or has the old one been capabile of 1/2 meter all along, and we've been getting downgraded pics?
  • no, I think you are thinking of Enemy of the State [imdb.com] :o)

    I don't think they did license plates, but the satellite footage in real time with the optical resolution they had in the movie was possible, I guess, but still a stretch .... and that was VIDEO from a satellite, not pictures .... just imagine the BANDWIDTH required ....

    This was the same movie that turned a normal security camera into a rotating 360 degree model ...... when I saw that, it pretty much ruined the movie for me .... but I like to pull movies apart like that ...

    rLowe

  • The government obviously sees this as a matter of national security, and sees the satellite photographs as a military asset. The government in and of itself doesn't design and manufacture F-18's, but they do have a say over what countries they can be sold to. And I think that makes sense. Not to mention that the development of a lot of this stuff is funded by tax dollars from the government.
  • In Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 2-15.4, Imagery Intelligence [usmc.mil], page 108, (which is a few megabytes of .PDF) there's a standard scale of imagery resolution vs. military uses, the "Visible National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scale". This scale applies to overhead imagery from satellites, aircraft, drones, etc.

    The scale runs from 1 to 9. A few entries:

    • 1. Over 9M resolution.
      Distinguish taxiways from runways at large airports. Recognize seaports.
    • ...
    • 6. 0.40 to 0.75M resolution:
      Distinguish between models of small/medium helicopters (e.g., HELIX A from HELIX B from HELIX C, HIND D from HIND E, HAZE A from HAZE B from HAZE C).
      Identify the shape of antennas on EW/GCI/ACQ radars as parabolic, parabolic with clipped corners or rectangular.
      Identify the spare tire on a medium-sized truck.
      Distinguish between SA-6, SA-ll, and SA-17 missile airframes.
      Identify individual launcher covers (8) of vertically launched SA-N-6 on SLAVA-class vessels. Identify automobiles as sedans or station wagons.
    • 7. 0.25 to 0.40M resolution:
      Identify fitments and fairings on a fighter-sized aircraft (e.g., FULCRUM, FOXHOUND).
      Identify ports, ladders, and vents on electronics vans.
      Detect the mount for antitank guided missiles (e.g., SAGGER on BMP-1).
      Detect details of the silo door hinging mechanism on Type III-F, III-G, and II-H launch silos and Type III-X launch control silos.
      Identify the individual tubes of the RBU on KIROV-, KARA-, and KRIVAK-class vessels.
      Identify individual rail ties.

    As you can see, at 0.5M resolution, most of the intel a military force really needs can be extracted. The examples at level 7 are interesting, however.

  • Israel lobbied the US to put a provision into US law prohibiting commercial satellite photography of Israel. [pbs.org] Yes, the whole country. Unclear why; maybe they're worried about newer photographs of their nuclear bomb plants [fas.org] or refugee camps. [shaml.org]
  • Well, I don't know about you - But I walk upright. This means that to a sattellite, I'm about 7 inches across at the head, and maybe 16-19 inches at my shoulders. So yes, It would be extremely hard to identify me w/ the 1/2 meter resolution images. For all you non-bi-pedal f00s though, your mothers can keep tabs on you.
    signature smigmature
  • Did you see the Macy's Day parade? My company did that (3D-Fly over parade route). There are so many uses for hi-res imagery other than spying on someone. The thing we are finding with hi-res imagery is nobody knows what to do with it. 1m imagery was not good enough for tv, so we used 1/2 meter air-photo imagery.

    From some of the other comments, do you know how long it would take to find somebody's girlfriend laying naked in their backyard? Just about forever and a day unless you knew when that person was going to lay naked in the back yard and you had total control over when the satellite was going to make the pass over that particular area( not very likely unless you can change the orbit of the earth). Otherwise it would be sheer luck!

  • If you want to see what the US doesn't want you to see, you can always go to terraserver [terraserver.com]. My home isn't visible, but all the army bases are...
  • The wife example was, as I mentioned in the original, a naive and perhaps stupid example... But half a meter today means few milimeters in few years.

    Nevertheless, whith that resolution you can get enough information about goods productions, plantations, petrol explorations, building surfaces, electric/energy installations, radio installations, satellital antennas (which are forbidden in some countries), and so on.

    Ask Putin (replace this for any president you'd prefer) which method is cheaper to control his opposites: to maintain a satellite infrastructure and research? Or to buy the photograph?

    I am not afraid of my privacity, I don't have anything important to hide, but privacity, in the sense that is technological expensive to peep you, is a fundamental value in most of "western minds"*.

    * Tried to avoid "democracy" or "economy" overused words.

    --ricardo

  • So, my neighbors can buy a phot to see what the hell I've got in my yard. Or to peep to my nude wife tanning in our roof.

    Aside from those naive examples, it means that healthy companies and individuals are now able to buy valued information about smaller or poorer counterparts.

    So, the world has become a enourmous peep show for those who can afford it.

    Definitevely not an argument to cheers, although not worse that when only few countries' governments were able to peek to the whole world.

    --ricardo

  • ...basically they should be able to make out the license plate on a car...but may not be able to read it.

    Oh no, I had a feeling that it was a bad idea to mount my license plate flat on the roof, but I didn't know why until now!
  • At half-meter resolution, they probably can't tell if it's you, your wife, or your dog. And what about airplanes? What about people going up on a mountain and looking down into people's yards? If your wife wants nude tanning in absolute privacy, she should go to a tanning salon.
  • *sigh* not to be precieved as a troll or a flamer with this statement, and I mean not to offend anyone, but one of the main ways analysists tell "male" and "female" is by breast size. Because of this, not all females are identified as such. Some males that are... um, large in the chest, are counted as females (assuming the lower region is not visible). Aside from these "features," one can not truly determine the gender of males vs. females.

    Macx
  • Satellite imagery is a wonderful thing, but like all digital data, it lends itself to (ahem) "changes".

    Certain parts of sat images of way out in the Neveda desert are often blurred. "Must have been an anomaly", quoth the vendor, "we'll get it next time". Curiously enough, they never did.

    Image tapes of the middle of nowhere in Alaska sometimes have large groups of pixels with exactly the same values in exactly the same relative positions. Yes, it probably was a processing artifact. The question is whether it was intentional.

    So even with half-meter data, I still wouldn't worry that anybody will see anything secret, or that privacy is being invaded from above. Even if a sat catches you having sex on the back lawn, you will only show up as four or five pixels anyways.

  • Or, perhaps because Israel is concerned about non-government paramilitary organizations hostile to Israel having access to satellite data?

    Sure, such organizations do have contacts with national governments hostile to Israel, but in general it's easier for the Israelis to infiltrate governments than paramilitary organizations, and the time to procure the imaging would be longer if the paramilitaries have to work through national intelligence bureaucracies.
  • making statements against or for far-future technology never works out well..

    Sure it does:

    "No perpetual motion machine will ever be built."

    "No chemical battery can store more power than the maximum energy of chemical bonds."

    "No device will ever be able to simultaneously detect the momentum and location of a subatomic particle."

    "No optical imaging device can resolve objects to a greater resolution than the limit caused by the diffraction of an intervening medium."

  • Why is it the end of a monopoly on high-end space imaging if you still have to get a license from the US government to sell it?

    (After all, people get licenses for Windows all the time, and presumably would continue to even if MacOS, Linux, Solaris, and all the rest dissapearaed.)

    -Rob

  • The article mentions a few sample resolutions, including a 10 centimeter resolution that would allow you to "resolve 'the rivet lines on bomber aircraft.'" How detailed can these pictures be? I mean, could they spin Hubble around, refocus, and snap the shutters a few times, or do you really need more specialized equipment? At some point, most likely, the limits will be due to heat rising from objects blurring things, or air molecules getting in the way... etc.

  • Re:An indication (Score:3)

    by Goonie ( 8651 ) <robert.merkel@b[ ... g ['ena' in gap]> on Saturday December 16, 2000 @06:10PM (#554383) Homepage
    Speculation has suggested that US spy satellites can just about read number plates.

    However, the ultimate resolution of the spy satellites is not the only measure of their capabilities. For instance, can they image the exact same area continuously? Every 5 minutes? Every hour? Once a day? How large an area can they image at the highest possible resolution? How large an area can they image at a lower, but still useful resolution (for instance, for counting tanks or airplanes)?

    My guess is that "scope time" or whatever the in-house jargon at the spy satellite agency is, would be very hard to get, and consequently ruthlessly rationed. I'd imagine perving on people sunbathing nude is generally ranked fairly low in the priority list.

  • A Work Of Fiction (Score:3)

    by weston ( 16146 ) <westonsd@@@canncentral...org> on Saturday December 16, 2000 @05:18PM (#554384) Homepage
    A couple of months back I wrote a work of fiction [whiteshoe.org] speculating on the possibility that a *company* (rather than a government) was capable of constant surveillance of any individual. What would they do with it? Well, you know how amusement parks and such are always trying to sell you footage of you doing stuff? Maybe something like that. And of course, maybe some people would pay more NOT to have their activities visible...
  • actually we can. during the war in serbia/croatia a guy was interviewed on TV who stated they saw graves with humans in them from the spy sats. he stated that both male and female bodies were observed along with children. since the average human is around 1m or so and to differentiate female from male you have to image the upper chest area with sufficient resolution, you can deduce the res of the spy sats to be around 1/16 of a meter. of course, the cameras on board have to have a greater res than that to compensate for atmospheric disturbance etc. ...basically they should be able to make out the license plate on a car...but may not be able to read it.

  • Re:How low can you go? (Score:3)

    by drudd ( 43032 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @05:30PM (#554386)
    In a word, no.

    The instruments on Hubble are very very sensitive, capturing as many photons as possible. It's really designed for a completely different problem.

    Looking at the earth, sun, or moon would SEVERELY damage the Hubble's optics, probably rendering much of its systems inoperable.

    Doug

  • Re:US Law (Score:3)

    by cheese_wallet ( 88279 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @04:03PM (#554387) Journal
    I believe the company in question, space imaging, inc, is owned by lockheed and raytheon. Seeing as how these are two major US defense contractors, I don't see them trying to skirt US laws.

  • Re:If they let us have half meter resolution.... (Score:3)

    by tetrad ( 131849 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @02:35PM (#554388)
    just imagine what kind of resolution they have for themselves

    "They" have a resolution of about 10cm, according to the article. Not so shabby. Let's see... image quality goes as the square of the resolution, so quality would be about 25 [(0.5m/0.1m)^2] times better than half meter resolution.

  • An indication (Score:3)

    by molekyl ( 152112 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @02:28PM (#554389)
    This could be an indication that the 'spy agencies' or whoever now have access to even more sophisticated satellite-imagery, as 'obsolete' military technology tends to become avaliable to the public in one way or another.

  • Oxford explains it (Score:3)

    by mcice ( 212918 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @03:36PM (#554390)
    You always get your pictures from space 24 hrs
    late to make them unusable for tactical purposes
    during times of war. AND I bet you 10 bucks the
    US government gets every single coordinate from
    which you requested shots to be taken. Maybe even
    as soon as you submit them, so you can imagine
    busy towing of new stuff into hangars once their
    bird gets close for a shot.

    Not that the Russians would care, their RESURS F14
    is still flying over Groom Lake at an altitude of
    230 km (82.1 deg steep inclination) with several
    course corrections having been made.

    Sometimes a who, what and when is more precious
    than not letting them have the info in the first
    place, which is getting harder because you can
    already buy old 2m resolution birds anyway.

  • Re:Wow! (Score:3)

    by moz25 ( 262020 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @03:20PM (#554391) Homepage
    I think you will need finer resolution to actually be able to distinguish people. Unless you're trying to detect the presence of a (big) car or something. I suppose this also depends on the size of your mom, though.

    Moz.

  • actually, there is a more straightforward way (Score:4)

    by El Puerco Loco ( 31491 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @05:39PM (#554392)
    The resolving power of any telescope can be calculated by the formula Theta = 115.8/D,
    where Theta is angualr resolution expressed in seconds of arc, and D is the diameter of the objective of the telescope/camera, which is what a spy satellite is. Now, the Hubble telescope has an objective of 2.4 meters, which is probably pretty close to the maximum diameter that will fit inside current launch vehicles, so the NRO satellites can't be much bigger than this. so that works out to around .05 seconds of arc.
    to figure out actual size from angular size and distance use the formula
    angular size(in degrees) = 57.3*actual size / distance
    which works out to right around 10 centimeters, if i've done the math right. so unless they have multi-segment meirros for their satellites or some other unknown capability that is about hte theoeretical limit of their resolution. Interestingly though, atmospheric turbulence (what astronomers refer to as 'seeing') limits actual performance to .5 seconds of arc in most cases, although i'm not sure this is as critical for taking pictures of terrestrial objects as it is for astronomical ones. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.

    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    Soylent Foods, Inc.

  • Satellite resolution limit (Score:4)

    by Remus Shepherd ( 32833 ) <remus@panix.com> on Saturday December 16, 2000 @08:25PM (#554393) Homepage
    The limit of resolution on a camera is the diffraction limit. That's the point where the wavelength of the light is larger than the angular distance of the object you're viewing. The formula is (angular resolution) = 1.22 * (wavelength)/(telescope diameter) in radians. To convert radians to length, multiply by the distance from your target (which is a good approximation at large distances.)

    Most low orbit satellites are about 700 km up. Visible light is around 300-600 nanometers...call it 400 nm.

    So the theoretical minimum telescope needed to have a one-centimeter resolution on the ground would be diameter = 1.22*400e-9*700e3/1e-2, or about 34 meters across. For reference, the Hubble's mirror is 2.4 meters diameter.

    So it's possible. Just not bloody likely given current limits on what we can build in space. :)

  • Licenses should not be needed (Score:4)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Saturday December 16, 2000 @03:37PM (#554394) Homepage
    A company should not need a license to sell photographs that it took with a satellite that it designed, built, and owns. The US government does not own the entire planet.

  • It's detailed, but... (Score:5)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @02:45PM (#554395)
    I don't think it's *that* detailed, guys.

    Here's one of the early "meter" images. [ncsu.edu]

    Sure, you can see the road, and big buildings, but you can't really identify a person...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • Re:Privacy implications (Score:5)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @03:23PM (#554396) Homepage
    But half a meter today means few milimeters in few years.
    Not true. To get a 5-mm-resolution 500x500 image from a height of 300 km, you'd have to have a field of view of 0.03 arc seconds. For comparison, atmospheric turbulence normally makes it pointless to try to make telescopic images with fields of view of less than about 1000 arc seconds. That's why the Hubble Space Telescope got built -- to do astronomy without that nasty atmosphere in the way.

    Nevertheless, whith that resolution you can get enough information about goods productions, plantations, petrol explorations, building surfaces, electric/energy installations, radio installations, satellital antennas (which are forbidden in some countries), and so on.
    If someone's afraid of the secret police knocking on his door about his satellite antenna, I think he has more to worry about from neighborhood informants than from space-based imaging. He could always put his satellite antenna under a blanket or something.

    I am not afraid of my privacity, I don't have anything important to hide, but privacity, in the sense that is technological expensive to peep you, is a fundamental value in most of "western minds"*.
    You need to be realistic about the privacy you expect. When you do something outdoors, you don't normally have an expectation of privacy.

  • Half Meter Resolution (Score:5)

    by DeadVulcan ( 182139 ) <dead.vulcan@nOspam.pobox.com> on Saturday December 16, 2000 @03:32PM (#554397)

    ... clearly show objects as small as 19 inches in length...

    Does this bug other people as much as it does me?

    Half-meter resolution doesn't mean that it "clearly shows objects as small as 19 inches!" This is quite misleading.

    It simply means that an object of 19 inches can register in the image- and "register" simply means that a dot on the image might be brighter or darker depending on the overall colour of the object.

    "To clearly show an object" implies that you'll be able to identify it. Some might even think that you'd be able to see features and details of the object. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    This is better:

    At half-meter resolution... forestry officials can count trees, and urban planners can view streetscapes, even discerning manhole covers.

    But I wish they had put that at the top of the article, not at the end of the last paragraph!

    --

  • 19 inch resolution (Score:5)

    by kinnunen ( 197981 ) on Saturday December 16, 2000 @03:29PM (#554398)
    Phew, for a moment I was afraid that I might have to stop masturbating in the garden. But if they double the resolution, I'll be in big trouble..

    Of course, the optical resolution doesn't really matter, they can always zoom in the picture to get more detail. You know, like they do on The X-Files.

    --

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