Satellites are all over the place, used for everything from communication to research to photography. No one really knows how many of these are pointed downward at the Earth, collecting visual data from virtually everywhere, or just how detailed the images they receive are.
We’re all familiar with Google Maps and its incredibly handy satellite view. Some places in the world boast resolution sharp enough to see the shadow cast on a sidewalk by an individual pedestrian. While that’s impressive, most of the time it’s not very up to date. This fall, all of that is scheduled to change.
A company from Canada called UrtheCast plans to install two cameras on the International Space Station that will continuously capture still images as well as high-resolution video and upload them to a free online database. Given that the ISS orbits the Earth in roughly 90 minutes, and the planned delay from time of image capture to availability on the database is only 2 hours, that’s very close to real-time coverage.
The video camera will take approximately 150 video clips per day, while the still camera will be taking one photo every millisecond. You read that right, that’s over eighty-six million photos per day, every day.
Move over, Google. There’s a new set of eyes on the way.
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