[WalterGR]

We came upon this development after doing our regular scans of Planet Labs' low-resolution imagery of various locales of interest across the globe… When glancing at daily 3-meter resolution images of the base

Whoa. I didn’t know that daily satellite imagery was available to civilians.

How much of the planet’s surface is imaged and available daily?

Edit: Ooh, just posted and relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30193804 . 10cm imagery from high-altitude balloons!

[beerandt]

Most users (especially county assessors) of high res imaging use aircraft since it's cheaper. There are other benefits, like smaller path width and reduced angular distortion. And flying when you know there isn't cloud cover, if timing isn't critical.

So using a balloon is novel, but using aircraft in general is much more common than satellite. It just isn't all marketed to the public. "Satellite imagery" has had more success as a publicly known term than "aerial imagery", and it doesn't occur to most people that they're different things.

>Whoa. I didn’t know that daily satellite imagery was available to civilians.

There at least used to be a requirement that imaging satellite operators only release imagery up to a certain resolution, and that anything higher was subject to review/ approval (presumably from NGA). And in exchange for this cooperation, the operator gets a nice federal contract for providing NGA copies of everything imaged, plus they get their launch permit approved.

>How much of the planet’s surface is imaged and available daily?

I think Planet Labs claims full coverage every three days? But that doesn't equate to 1/3 every day, and coverage that isn't evenly distributed, due to the nature of orbital ground paths.

[dharmab]

It's more frequent than that. From the public image spec:

> The complete PlanetScope constellation of approximately 130 satellites is able to image the entire land surface of the Earth every day (equating to a daily collection capacity of 200 million km²/day).

Since then the constellation has grown; after last month's launch the contstellation is over 200 satellites: https://www.planet.com/pulse/so-you-launched-a-satellite-now...

Disclaimer: I'm a Planet Labs employee.

[beerandt]

Thanks- that's... a lot more than the last time I checked. It's been a few years since my work required me to be up to date with any of this.

That's some pretty amazing progress.

A quick glance of the site doesn't immediately define med or high res. Do you have frequency of coverage by resolution listed somewhere?

[dharmab]

There is now a tasking product for high resolution imagery, with multiple visits per day capability: https://www.planet.com/products/hi-res-monitoring/

[asperous]

NASA has this site: https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/

Of course the resolution is very low, it is meant for Earth science monitoring

[marsRoverDev]

The US knew when <X> satellite imagery company's satellites were going to go overhead at some US base, waited for the image to be taken and then moved all its aircraft before a missile attack recently by Iran (or Iran proxies).

They know 100% who is buying what imagery, and when the satellites will be overhead.

There is 0% chance that this is a mistake. I wouldn't be surprised if the US can OK or not OK the images that make their way to Google Maps - in France, every government site gets censored before it makes its way to Google Maps.

[bagels]

Pretty much everywhere besides the poles.