Imagine, google map updating itself every hour. Imagine if it had a
resolution of one square meter on the ground. When an agricultural field is
harvested, it would look different – almost real time. You could see the cloud
cover changing. You could track the development of a forest fire. Imagine!
Of course right now, if you look at IISER Pune campus, for example, you will see
what it was about a year ago. All that might indeed change. Imagine 24
satellites taking continuous photographs and another set of 24 satellites
taking videos as they go by.
If you are anxious about the big brother watching,
here comes your world of paranoia. But if you are an enthusiast of military,
government and big corporate technologies going commercial, and available to citizens,
you may be overjoyed.
In any case, the traffic in outer space is going to be heavy from
2014. The manufacturing techniques used in automobile industry is being applied
to satellites: cheaper, lighter, smaller satellites (some weighing as low as 5
kg) will soon be deployed by companies for getting better high resolution
images of the earth in a continuous manner.
Nature 505, 143–144 (09 January 2014) doi:10.1038/505143a
thank you for information.
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