Mark Johnson cant wait for the Ikonos satellite to launch.
"Its going to be awesome," says the otherwise precise-speaking technician.
Ikonos, a satellite Earth-camera, will change the way humans view the planet. Its precision detail -- the name of a football team painted in an end zone will be legible from its view -- will make it the best Earth-imaging satellite available commercially.
Farmers, pilots, and city planners are already using Earth images from satellites to help them in their work.
But Johnson and his colleagues at Visual Forensics have been using data from Earth-imaging satellites for a special purpose: sticking it to the bad guys, and keep the good guys out of trouble.
Its satellite justice, made possible by the kinds of images once available only through "eyes in the sky" run by spy agencies.
Johnson, who is the director of motion graphics for Visual Forensics, uses satellite imagery to construct simulations of events that are then entered as courtroom evidence.
Earlier this year, the firm used Earth images to point out an optical illusion that may have caused a Marine pilot to fly his plane dangerously low, slashing down support for a ski lift in Italy in an accident that killed 20.
Visual clues garnered from satellite views and aerial flybys showed that the pilot would have mistakenly sensed that the plane was rising when in fact it was only one side of a valley descending. When the pilot pushed the plane downward, it went dangerously low, slicing the ski lift cable.
That apparently cast enough doubt on the allegations that the pilot was seeking thrills by flying at unacceptably low altitudes. The pilot was acquitted of manslaughter charges.
As the quality of satellite images improves, so-called forensic visualization -- the realistic reconstruction of events like train wrecks and car accidents presented as evidence -- is beginning to boom.
In the nine months that Visual Forensics has operated, theyve worked on more than a dozen cases.
But if Johnson had access to Ikonos, his representations could have been ten times as detailed -- and that could mean good things for business.
"Weve been limited a lot because of resolution," Johnson said. "With the advent of higher resolution imagery, well use it all the time."
The images he used from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency had a resolution of 10 meters. Ikonos will have a one-meter resolution.
Satellite imagery is needed, he says, because aerial representations often cant capture a large enough area. Satellites also help correct errors due to the curvature of the Earth.
But the two work well together, and thats how the firm created their images for the defense of the Marine pilot. Aerial shots were laid over the broader landscape of satellite shots.
For $25,000, you could hire Visual Forensics to help defend you from charges that you caused a multi-car pile-up, or to prosecute a train driver for failing to brake in time to avoid a tractor trailer.
advertisement
