WASHINGTON -- Feel like somebody is peering over your shoulder? It’s probably best to look skyward rather than behind you.
High-powered, privately built satellites can now offer data once the preserve of military and intelligence agencies. As satellite cameras click away, imagery sent to Earth can help make snap decisions about
fighting wildfires, fending off rampaging floodwaters or help curb the spread of urban sprawl.
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| The IKONOS image shows the downtown area around Mile High stadium in Denver, Colorado.
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IKONOS, the most powerful Earth-imaging satellite available to the public, captured these telling images of the Denver, Colorado fires in June 2000.
In the private pay-per-view
satellite business, the word is -- quite literally -- you haven’t seen anything yet.
For one, powerful desktop computer software will allow more people to grab images taken anywhere around the globe via the internet, then manipulate and interpret that data faster and easier.
[inset]
Focusing in on the future, satellite remote sensing experts gathered here October 25 at
the 2000 International Space Symposium, sponsored by the Space Foundation.
Not a novelty
Remote-sensing satellite pictures are increasingly being used by the electronic and print media, said Daniel Dubno, producer and technologist of CBS News in New York.
Space imagery can help tell the story, Dubno said, be it reporting on country-to-country conflicts, or covering a nuclear reactor meltdown, such as the Russian Chernobyl in 1986. That was not always the case, he said.
"Imagery was rarely available in any kind of timely fashion," Dubno said. Today, however, satellite pictures of wildfires, areas struck by earthquakes, or the swath of a tornado cut through a city are now seen by millions of people in print and in television broadcasts, he said.
But Dubno said that satellite imagery can be confusing. "If the audience can’t understand what they are looking at, forget about it," he said.
With the lofting last year of Space Imaging’s Ikonos satellite, high-resolution space snapshots of world hot spots can be rapidly delivered via the internet. Ikonos can relay images showing objects just 3 feet (1 meter) across.
"But Ikonos is getting lonely up there," Dubno said. "People talk...few people launch," he said.
Stiff competition
Ikonos won’t be lonely much longer, said Joseph Dodd, vice president of national programs for Orbital Imaging Corporation (Orbimage), a subsidiary of Orbital Sciences Corporation. His company is set to launch two OrbView, high-resolution imaging satellites in 2001.
Also, another U.S. company, EarthWatch is ready to hurl its QuickBird 1 into orbit next month, Dodd said. Add to that mix a host of commercial high-resolution satellites built by Russia, Israel, France and India and you’ve got "very stiff international competition," Dodd said.
John Hoffman of Aerial Images, Inc., joined Dodd in stressing that U.S. government policies regarding commercial satellite picture taking and distribution need to be addressed. "Policy directives may indeed hamper the full development of our industry," Hoffman said.
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At issue is free and
open marketing of satellite photos versus U.S. government restrictions on selling high-resolution images through "shutter control" during times of conflict.
Transparent world
Hoffman called for "unfettered" growth of private remote-sensing efforts.
"National security has got to be redefined, in terms of government and commercial partnerships. It’s got to be put at the level that local and state governments can use these products to do things," Hoffman told the audience.
"Mutual assured observation will prove to be a good thing worldwide from consumers to national security interests," Dodd added.
Lt. General James King, director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (
NIMA) said it is time "to integrate a national, space-based system with the commercial remote-sensing industry." NIMA supports national security and military objectives for the United States, utilizing the country’s slew of highly classified photoreconnaissance satellites.
One of the detailed images of Area 51, originally released in mid-April. This high-resolution image was captured by Space Imaging’s IKONOS satellite.
"We are entering into a transparent world, where more people are knowledgeable about what’s going on. I have faith in humanity that this will bring about better decisions and clearer understanding," King said.
PC in the sky
A revolution is underway, said Martin Sweeting, managing director and chief executive officer of Surrey Space Centre at the University of Surrey in Great Britain.
Sweeting said very small, very cheap Earth observation craft can move quickly from paper idea to blastoff. Every country or organization can own their own space asset, tailored to meet specific tasks, he said.
Microsatellites are the personal computers of space, Sweeting said. "For the first time, we can really have affordable constellations of satellites at very low cost, which allows us to increase the revisit time a satellite can image a spot on the Earth," he said.
"There’s quite an avalanche in remote sensing coming over the next five years," Sweeting said.
Kass Green, president of Pacific Meridian Resources in Oregon, said the demand curve for commercial purchase of satellite scenes is strong. "That is because we’re doing some very basic things. We keep on making more people and we’re not making any more land," she said.
Land is the ultimate scarce resource, Green said. "As land gets more and more scarce, people need highly accurate and timely information about the landscape," she told the audience.
Satellite photos like those churned out by Ikonos, Green said, "have busted open the entire urban market." That is evidenced by two things: increasing dollar value of land, as well as increasing controversy over land use, she said.
The panel of satellite remote-sensing experts agreed that more customer education is needed. Moreover, the barriers to using commercial remote sensing are institutional and organizational, not technical. Lastly, commercial photography from space that reveals ever-higher amounts of detail is in the offing.
"There’s a good thing happening here. Both democracy and capitalism are dependent upon open information. If we want to foster both of those institutions worldwide, then the information has to be made available," Green said.
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