3 ms·

This is an interesting capability. Since the very first spy satellites were placed into orbit, adversaries have carefully tracked their orbits so that they cou

This is an interesting capability. Since the very first spy satellites were placed into orbit, adversaries have carefully tracked their orbits so that they could avoid exposure during an overpass. This form of cat and mouse game has had various options thrown at it, from satellites that can change their orbits, to "cover" satellites which operate as one thing and provide surveillance capability in addition to their "public" persona. SpaceX threw up 2 satellites on a ship that was carrying 60 separate satellites (the others being Starlink nodes). But it could throw up 60 black sky satellites if asked. Further it could do that fairly quickly[1] from time to request to launch using a flight proven booster. Or perhaps 30 satellites with their own booster engine to maximize the number of orbits they could reach. At some point continuous monitoring of a point on Earth becomes simply a question of cost. That can be kind of game changing from a geopolitical perspective. [1] Where quickly here is anywhere from 10 to 60 days depending on whether or not a company like black sky could have the upper stage on hand with the delivery system.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Why bother with this, instead of having the emerging sat constellations deployed in ways that offer continous coverage of any place on earth, anytime, from various angles, in all useful spectra? Call it iLive by Setec Astronomy. Maybe make it public in ways like OpenStreetMap, combine with something like Internet Archive, have it distributed by some P2P-protocol. Done. Global transparency/awareness for all. Next best thing to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
ricardobeat 6y ago
Planet Labs already has full coverage of the Earth, and with the latest SkySat (another 3 launched earlier today) they will have the ability to image the same point on earth 12x a day. I think it's very unlikely that the USA and maybe others don't have this capability already.
- 7952 6y ago
  Don't forget that many of those images will be of cloud.
  - m463 6y ago
    do they all work in the visible spectrum?
    - Fordec 6y ago
      Companies like Capella Space and ICEYE operate in the RF/radar spectrum
- garmaine 6y ago
  The USA does not. The NRO does not operate large fleets of small satellites. They have just a few big ones. The optics are way better though.
  - natcombs 6y ago
    >> optics are way better though That was going to be my question. Doesn’t the NRO need big optical lenses for their missions? Are there any “telescopic” advancements that can fit into small sats that can meet their mission objectives?
    - ChuckMcM 6y ago
      Yes. My understanding of these things based mostly on trolling through the various digital imagery company websites, is that many of the small satellites can generate detail as good as the "big guys" (at least as far is known in open sources) by using a telescopic lens. The difference however is aperture. Given the size of the optics on a small satellite the amount of area it can cover at 1 meter per pixel resolution is much smaller than something with a very large aperture could. As a result if you take a 10 Mpixel image with 1 meter per pixel accuracy that is a region roughly 3.2km on a side. Not a particularly large area.
      - bartwe 6y ago
        Do the small sats have an advantage by being closer to the target, needing less zoom?
        xvedejas 6y ago
        Higher orbits are much more expensive to launch a satellite into. I think partially because of this, commercial imaging satellites will be in the range of 600-800km altitude unless there's a really good reason otherwise. So I don't think that distance would account for a very large factor.
        Fordec 6y ago
        Yes. The difference between 100k-400km in LEO is far different from 22000km in GEO. Planet Labs updated their licenses for a few satellites a couple of months back to gain double digit percentage resolution quality increases by dropping the orbit (I think it was somewhere about by 50km to the lower end of that range) for example. The trade off is that you hit more atmosphere in that lower orbit and will reenter the atmosphere much sooner. So that increases the number of launches you need to do to replenish your fleet. Which is $$$. Also, they have greater relative velocities so require better targeting and command & control technology to compensate.
- trianglem 6y ago
  A person I know at ISRO mentioned that Planet labs did the launches from India in violation of US accords. Not sure exactly which ones.
  - vermontdevil 6y ago
    No that’s Swarm Technologies. https://qz.com/1226962/an-unauthorized-satellite-launch-in-india-threatens-us-regulatory-reform-in-space/ https://qz.com/1226962/an-unauthorized-satellite-launch-in-i...
gruez 6y ago
>That can be kind of game changing from a geopolitical perspective. Don't forget from a civil rights perspective. Remember this[1] from a few years ago, or this[2] a few weeks ago? Now imagine that the government can do the same thing, all over the us, 24/7, with zero marginal cost. [1] https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/how-buzzfeed-news-revealed-hidden-spy-planes-in-us-airspace.php https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/how-buzzfeed-news-revealed-hidd... [2] https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3zvwj/military-fbi-flying-surveillance-planes-george-floyd-protesters https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3zvwj/military-fbi-flyin...
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Yes, interesting. See a car speeding? The software knows where the car came from, will know where it is when "destinated". I suppose license-plate readers do something similar, but this is space-based, blanket, all-seeing. Brave new world....
  - natcombs 6y ago
    >> Brave new world.... Did you mean Orwellian? Unless I have my dystopian novels confused
    - Zancarius 6y ago
      I think the poster meant it as a colloquialism which itself was popularized (?) by Shakespeare; i.e. as a turn of phrase that inspired the title of Huxley's work.
  - swagasaurus-rex 6y ago
    Cars go underground, beneath underpasses, inside of parking garages. I can't imagine any way even 100% aerial visual coverage can possibly track individual cars with any degree of certainty.
    - JKCalhoun 6y ago
      I would not be surprised if they were able to do a pretty decent job. Cars that go into parking garages are typically among the ones that later come out. Cars that pass beneath underpasses are generally among the ones that emerge from the other side. Etc. Clever software should easily be able follow all cars with very few errors.
PoachedSausage 6y ago
It must be getting pretty crowded up in LEO. How long before we get a Kessler Effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
- ladberg 6y ago
  Even adding thousands more satellites the chance that any will hit each other is incredibly small, and even if they hit it's probably not going to cascade. The Kessler effect only becomes a real possibility once we start purposefully blowing up many satellites.
- outworlder 6y ago
  Not nearly crowded enough. Picture the ocean. Can we agree that it's immense? How many ships can we launch until it becomes too crowded? Now imagine the Earth has no land masses and oceans cover all of it. How many more ships can we add? Now imagine that the Earth is bigger than what it is. A few hundred KM larger in radius. Your oceans have become so much bigger now as they have a larger area. And now imagine your ships are not only on the surface, but they could be submarines, or they could be planes, all crossing one another without ever touching. This is what space looks like. It's ridiculously big. The only issue is that some orbits are way more useful than others, so they get more use. We can fit a crapton of stuff there, provided that we stop doing dumb things (like blowing up satellites). LEO also has plenty of drag, so they decay. Higher orbits are more problematic.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > Picture the ocean. Can we agree that it's immense? How many ships can we launch until it becomes too crowded? Except that we're not worried about just the large things like "ships" (satellites), but all the small things as well. Something measuring 1 cm on a side can cause critical damage, and things that 10 cm would be catastrophic: * https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/12/11664668/iss-window-chip-space-debris-tim-peake https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/12/11664668/iss-window-chip-... Even "the impact from a tiny piece of space debris, possibly a paint flake or small metal fragment no bigger than a few thousandths of a millimetre across" can crack the windows on the ISS: * http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2016/05/Impact_chip http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2016/05/Impact_chip And I'd rather we worry about these things while they are not a problem, rather than later when they become one: an ounce of prevention and all that.
sangnoir 6y ago
How powerful does an earth-based laser need to be to temporarily blind any optical sensors without damaging any other part so that "innocent" satellites are unaffected? It probably will be standard to illuminate up all suspect satellites coming up the horizon in this way at sensitive locations and/or sensitive times in this way

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Why bother with this, instead of having the emerging sat constellations deployed in ways that offer continous coverage of any place on earth, anytime, from various angles, in all useful spectra? Call it iLive by Setec Astronomy. Maybe make it public in ways like OpenStreetMap, combine with something like Internet Archive, have it distributed by some P2P-protocol. Done. Global transparency/awareness for all. Next best thing to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

ricardobeat 6y ago

Planet Labs already has full coverage of the Earth, and with the latest SkySat (another 3 launched earlier today) they will have the ability to image the same point on earth 12x a day. I think it's very unlikely that the USA and maybe others don't have this capability already.

7952 6y ago
Don't forget that many of those images will be of cloud.
- m463 6y ago
  do they all work in the visible spectrum?
  - Fordec 6y ago
    Companies like Capella Space and ICEYE operate in the RF/radar spectrum
garmaine 6y ago
The USA does not. The NRO does not operate large fleets of small satellites. They have just a few big ones. The optics are way better though.
- natcombs 6y ago
  >> optics are way better though That was going to be my question. Doesn’t the NRO need big optical lenses for their missions? Are there any “telescopic” advancements that can fit into small sats that can meet their mission objectives?
  - ChuckMcM 6y ago
    Yes. My understanding of these things based mostly on trolling through the various digital imagery company websites, is that many of the small satellites can generate detail as good as the "big guys" (at least as far is known in open sources) by using a telescopic lens. The difference however is aperture. Given the size of the optics on a small satellite the amount of area it can cover at 1 meter per pixel resolution is much smaller than something with a very large aperture could. As a result if you take a 10 Mpixel image with 1 meter per pixel accuracy that is a region roughly 3.2km on a side. Not a particularly large area.
    - bartwe 6y ago
      Do the small sats have an advantage by being closer to the target, needing less zoom?
      - xvedejas 6y ago
        Higher orbits are much more expensive to launch a satellite into. I think partially because of this, commercial imaging satellites will be in the range of 600-800km altitude unless there's a really good reason otherwise. So I don't think that distance would account for a very large factor.
      - Fordec 6y ago
        Yes. The difference between 100k-400km in LEO is far different from 22000km in GEO. Planet Labs updated their licenses for a few satellites a couple of months back to gain double digit percentage resolution quality increases by dropping the orbit (I think it was somewhere about by 50km to the lower end of that range) for example. The trade off is that you hit more atmosphere in that lower orbit and will reenter the atmosphere much sooner. So that increases the number of launches you need to do to replenish your fleet. Which is $$$. Also, they have greater relative velocities so require better targeting and command & control technology to compensate.
trianglem 6y ago
A person I know at ISRO mentioned that Planet labs did the launches from India in violation of US accords. Not sure exactly which ones.
- vermontdevil 6y ago
  No that’s Swarm Technologies. https://qz.com/1226962/an-unauthorized-satellite-launch-in-india-threatens-us-regulatory-reform-in-space/ https://qz.com/1226962/an-unauthorized-satellite-launch-in-i...

gruez 6y ago

>That can be kind of game changing from a geopolitical perspective. Don't forget from a civil rights perspective. Remember this[1] from a few years ago, or this[2] a few weeks ago? Now imagine that the government can do the same thing, all over the us, 24/7, with zero marginal cost. [1] https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/how-buzzfeed-news-revealed-hidden-spy-planes-in-us-airspace.php https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/how-buzzfeed-news-revealed-hidd... [2] https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3zvwj/military-fbi-flying-surveillance-planes-george-floyd-protesters https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3zvwj/military-fbi-flyin...

JKCalhoun 6y ago
Yes, interesting. See a car speeding? The software knows where the car came from, will know where it is when "destinated". I suppose license-plate readers do something similar, but this is space-based, blanket, all-seeing. Brave new world....
- natcombs 6y ago
  >> Brave new world.... Did you mean Orwellian? Unless I have my dystopian novels confused
  - Zancarius 6y ago
    I think the poster meant it as a colloquialism which itself was popularized (?) by Shakespeare; i.e. as a turn of phrase that inspired the title of Huxley's work.
- swagasaurus-rex 6y ago
  Cars go underground, beneath underpasses, inside of parking garages. I can't imagine any way even 100% aerial visual coverage can possibly track individual cars with any degree of certainty.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    I would not be surprised if they were able to do a pretty decent job. Cars that go into parking garages are typically among the ones that later come out. Cars that pass beneath underpasses are generally among the ones that emerge from the other side. Etc. Clever software should easily be able follow all cars with very few errors.

PoachedSausage 6y ago

It must be getting pretty crowded up in LEO. How long before we get a Kessler Effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

ladberg 6y ago
Even adding thousands more satellites the chance that any will hit each other is incredibly small, and even if they hit it's probably not going to cascade. The Kessler effect only becomes a real possibility once we start purposefully blowing up many satellites.
outworlder 6y ago
Not nearly crowded enough. Picture the ocean. Can we agree that it's immense? How many ships can we launch until it becomes too crowded? Now imagine the Earth has no land masses and oceans cover all of it. How many more ships can we add? Now imagine that the Earth is bigger than what it is. A few hundred KM larger in radius. Your oceans have become so much bigger now as they have a larger area. And now imagine your ships are not only on the surface, but they could be submarines, or they could be planes, all crossing one another without ever touching. This is what space looks like. It's ridiculously big. The only issue is that some orbits are way more useful than others, so they get more use. We can fit a crapton of stuff there, provided that we stop doing dumb things (like blowing up satellites). LEO also has plenty of drag, so they decay. Higher orbits are more problematic.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Picture the ocean. Can we agree that it's immense? How many ships can we launch until it becomes too crowded? Except that we're not worried about just the large things like "ships" (satellites), but all the small things as well. Something measuring 1 cm on a side can cause critical damage, and things that 10 cm would be catastrophic: * https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/12/11664668/iss-window-chip-space-debris-tim-peake https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/12/11664668/iss-window-chip-... Even "the impact from a tiny piece of space debris, possibly a paint flake or small metal fragment no bigger than a few thousandths of a millimetre across" can crack the windows on the ISS: * http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2016/05/Impact_chip http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2016/05/Impact_chip And I'd rather we worry about these things while they are not a problem, rather than later when they become one: an ounce of prevention and all that.

sangnoir 6y ago

How powerful does an earth-based laser need to be to temporarily blind any optical sensors without damaging any other part so that "innocent" satellites are unaffected? It probably will be standard to illuminate up all suspect satellites coming up the horizon in this way at sensitive locations and/or sensitive times in this way