When Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You
When Eyes in the Sky Start Looking Right at You
New satellites that orbit the Earth at very low altitudes may result in a world where nothing is really off limits.
New satellites that orbit the Earth at very low altitudes may result in a world where nothing is really off limits.
I want to rip out their eyes.
Haven't spy satellites had super clear resolution for quite a few decades now?
Yes. The real difference is that the newer tech is cheap and fast enough to be useful in real time to general industry and local/state government, not just spooks.
I used to work for an imaging satellite company. And yes - spy satellites are crazy powerful. The real problem is one of bandwidth. Crazy powerful spy satellites are expensive - and there aren't a lot of them.
So everybody is competing for time on them. Satellite images have been traditionally expensive and rare. We web intelligence agencies have to take turns and sometimes miss important events due to scheduling or timing conflicts.
The thing these new satellites offer is broad coverage. When you have a few hundred small-sats there's just many, many more opportunities to have eyes on the part of the world you're interested in.
All that said, you want to pay attention to the resolution of the images. The place I worked for was providing imagery about 1-meter resolution. E.g. each pixel in the image corresponded to about 1sq-meter of earth. We figured this was a good compromise between image quality and privacy. Enough to count cars, see weather patterns, make out groups of people, but identifying any given person was right out.
So if you see an imaging company throwing a bazillion imaging small-sats up - its worth checking what their reported resolution is. 0.5m means a real tall dude would still only be 2 pixels. But 1cm resolution means you could count their teeth.
As far as I remember, there's a resolution limit to classical imaging, but I guess that may be overcome by using a mesh of satellites and some other clever methods
I wonder how much laser power its sensors can withstand.
Are you talking about launching your own satellite with the ability to aim a laser at another satellite while in orbit, or are you talking about attempting to point a ground based laser at something moving at roughly Mach 24 or faster?
Beam decoherence is a pretty big problem when you are lasering through the entire atmosphere, and both scenarios require an astounding degree of precision.
The latter - targeting from ground. While that sounds daunting, it's already possible. Sats can aim data laser beams at other sats at even higher relative speeds.
Beam decoherence is a pretty big problem when you are lasering through the entire atmosphere, and both scenarios require an astounding degree of precision.
Beam coherence is the only problem with targeting sats from the ground. But remember, these sats come with big telescopes to collect as much light as they can. It may not take a lot of radiative flux to overload their sensors. I wonder how much it will take to completely fry them.
At least I'm safe inside my mind.
For now
Elon is already working to change that! :)
We’re acutely aware of the privacy implications
Yes, I bet they are. I bet their monetization strategy is "pay us to do the shameful dirty work."
Military contractors be like:
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Anyone living in the modern world has grown familiar with diminishing privacy amid a surge security cameras, trackers built into smartphones, facial recognition systems, drones and other forms of digital monitoring.
“This is a giant camera in the sky for any government to use at any time without our knowledge,” said Jennifer Lynch, general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who in 2019 urged civil satellite regulators to address this issue.
“It’s taking us one step closer to a Big-Brother-is-watching kind of world,” added Jonathan C. McDowell, a Harvard astrophysicist who publishes a monthly report on civilian and military space developments.
As predicted, pictures from orbit have continually improved in quality, aiding news reporting on wars, refugees, secret bases, human rights abuses, environmental destruction, natural disasters and military buildups.
Albedo’s website says its imagery can help governments “monitor hotspots, eliminate uncertainty, and mobilize with speed.” The company, in listing its core values, says it supports “data-driven investigative journalism” among other activities that “ensure we improve the world we live in.”
Illustrating the fleet’s observational powers, Mr. Tri, the Albedo co-founder, said the space cameras could detect such vehicle details as sunroofs, racing stripes and items in a flatbed truck.
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