9 ms·

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://planet.com https://planet.com (planet customer, no other affiliation)
- 5etho 5y ago
  >contact sales thank you company, I'm gladly calling to check your services now
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ajcp 5y ago
  I think OP was asking more for a live-stream type service, where this appears to be static imagery.
  - shalmanese 5y ago
    This is the best that's currently available.
    - ajcp 5y ago
      No doubt, a great resource, was just trying to help get to the meat of the comment :D
hatsunearu 5y ago
https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ not quite real time (I'm not sure if that's even possible) but this is quite up to date. I used to to check out the smoke from last year. edit: you get pictures every 10 minutes of the whole globe, but the resolution is pretty bad, good enough to check the cloud coverage though
- erk__ 5y ago
  There is also https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ which seems to be a bit higher resolution, I think they are imagin the whole earth every other day.
  - kylebarron 5y ago
    The two Sentinel-2 satellites together cover all land area of the Earth every 5 days, but are only 10-meter pixel resolution. > 10 days at the equator with one satellite, and 5 days with 2 satellites under cloud-free conditions which results in 2-3 days at mid-latitudes https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-2 https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-2
- Toxygene 5y ago
  YMMV, but I just checked my neighborhood out and the satellite image is ~5 years old.
  - kylebarron 5y ago
    Once you pass a certain zoom (looks like zoom 11.5 here) the imagery is no longer recent. You can see the copyright statement change to "Microsoft", where it presumably just loads data from Bing maps. At lower zooms, where the copyright is something like "GOES-East", that's more real-time data because it comes from geostationary satellites that can take (low resolution) images every few minutes.
- nikisweeting 5y ago
  The imagery on here is 5-10 years older than the imagery on Google Maps for much of Quebec, not sure about other areas.
- grawprog 5y ago
  >but this is quite up to date. It's up to date zoomed out, but zoomed in seems to be similar to what google maps provides. The picture of the area I live is the same 10 year old picture on google maps, complete with a house that hasn't existed in almost as much time.
tpmx 5y ago
Maybe Starlink satellites should also feature a camera? They've already got the connectivity. You'd need a large constellation and this one seems like it will become huge.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  At 1 px/m², the Earth's surface is 5×10^14 pixels, so with the full constellation of 10,000 satellites and 1 fps that'd be 5×10^10 pixels/satellite/second (about a terabit/satellite/second uncompressed). If you can shoot 30 images per second, you'd need a 1.6 gigapixel camera. It's technically possible but not feasible.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "It's technically possible but not feasible." Not to mention that earth imaging satellites require approval by the government and, I believe, compliance with international regulations.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Why downvote? It's really frustrating to see people downvote a factual statement (as opposed to opinion) without giving any sort of correction to that information. If I'm wrong - show me! I don't need this sort of crap after working all day at a job I hate where my voice is basically worthless and a legitimate debate can't take place.
  - tpmx 5y ago
    It would be quite useful at lower resolutions too, I think. Edit: The uncompressed bitrate comment is a bit like saying 1080p network video streaming will take decades to become feasible, because the incompressed bitrate is 1.485 gigabit/s...
    - bzbarsky 5y ago
      The obvious first bandwidth issue here is through the optical sensor, which is definitely pre-compression, no?
Denvercoder9 5y ago
Clouds would be a challenge.
paxys 5y ago
Not really feasible at a usable resolution. The number of satellites required to do this as well as the data bandwidth needed far exceeds our current capacity.
JoshTriplett 5y ago
In addition to cost, there are various national laws that restrict satellite imagery with resolution better than various thresholds.
- yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
  Which the article indicates, at least as it relates to the US and her companies, is no longer the case: > In July 2020, the KBA was dropped, and now the US government allows American companies to provide far higher-quality images of the region (so that objects the size of a person can be readily picked out).
  - JoshTriplett 5y ago
    That's one such agreement between two governments; there are numerous other laws and agreements that would impact anyone attempting to provide real-time imagery of substantial portions of Earth.
    - yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
      I thought the KBA was an amendment to US statutory law, not an 'agreement' between nations? What are the other laws and agreements to which you're alluding to, but weren't referenced in the article?
  - skissane 5y ago
    KBA wasn't dropped, it still applies. The law is still on the books. KBA gives the regulator (NOAA) the authority to set a resolution limit for images of Israel. They are supposed to set it to be the best resolution commercially available from non-US providers. In 1998, NOAA set it at 2 metres. In July 2020, NOAA dropped it to 0.4 metres. NOAA had been dragging their feet about that – in 2018, evidence was presented to them of commercial availability of sub-2m resolution images of Israel from non-US providers, but they didn't accept it. Their argument apparently was that even if sub-2m resolution was commercially available, it wasn't "commercially available enough". One factor that changed their mind this time is widespread resale of foreign imagery by US resellers (the KBA only applies to sale of US-acquired imagery, US companies are legally free to resell foreign-acquired imagery.) KBA still limits US providers to a 0.4 metre resolution of Israel. When foreign commercial providers start offering better than 0.4 metre resolution of Israel, NOAA may drop the limit again. But they may drag their feet that time too.
caymanjim 5y ago
The short answer is no. High-resolution imagery comes from low-orbit satellites, which make a complete orbit about every two hours, and image long, narrow strips with each pass, taking days to image the whole planet. There are many of these satellites: commercial, non-military (publicly-accessible) governmental, and governmental (secret), of varying resolutions. These are also supplemented by aerial (plane) imagery. The net result is that updated-daily imagery exists, but real-time does not. While I'm not privy to the capabilities of the US military, the kind of real-time planet-wide surveillance that movies like Enemy of the State suggest doesn't exist planet-wide. The highest-resolution images on e.g. Google Maps are from planes, rather than satellites, and aren't imaged anywhere near daily. The only way to have constant, real-time imaging of a fixed location is with a geostationary satellite, which will be so far away (22,000 miles) that the resolution will be low. Given an unlimited budget, a huge constellation of hundreds or thousands of satellites could come close to real-time planet-wide imaging, but even then, you'd be getting views at different angles as various satellites took images, and you wouldn't ever have a clear directly-overhead view of people walking around.
- notJim 5y ago
  Couldn't starlink do something like this theoretically? Seems like it checks several of the boxes.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- manigandham 5y ago
  A fleet of drones that stay airborne can provide real-time feeds of a regional battlespace for military use. Cheaper, lower latency, higher quality data - but vulnerable to enemy airpower.
- therein 5y ago
  Even though it would be neither covert nor cost-effective, couldn't you use a constellation like Iridium and add some auto-compositing capabilities? The resolution and angles for your point of interest will change but you should be able to keep a near-constant coverage.
mvanaltvorst 5y ago
planet.com can get you a ~12 images per day [1] for a reasonable price. If cost really isn't an issue, I'm confident you could strike a deal with planet.com to place their next few new satellites into the specific orbit you want to up the frequency even more. [1]: https://www.planet.com/pulse/12x-rapid-revisit-announcement/ https://www.planet.com/pulse/12x-rapid-revisit-announcement/, as of June 2020.
- rsync 5y ago
  What is that reasonable price? It is not given on the page you linked…
  - op00to 5y ago
    Are you looking at a 7-8 figure upside to your deal? It's reasonable. Are you looking for fun? Unreasonable.
  - johnmcelhone 5y ago
    I believe 3m res data from them is around the $2 per square kilometre mark, however varies wildly depending on scale
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Could you divulge what you use the images for? Or, anyone who buys satellite images? I know about real estate, navigation, and I've heard that some business use them to forecast retail sales. I curious about other uses.
  - mvanaltvorst 5y ago
    Tracking deforestation, melting of glaciers, basically anything geographic. If you're looking for things people profit from, you're right that some trading firms use satellite images to count cars in parking lots of e.g. Walmart to predict earnings reports. Similar things can be done on oil refineries for example (some satellites can even look /through/ oil tanks to look at oil levels by looking at specific wavelengths).
bhouston 5y ago
We will have this eventually. Piggy baking on STarlink next gen or similar should make this possible.
billfruit 5y ago
Even for emergencies like flooding where it is very important to know which areas are flooded and which are not, I think presently there is no satellite based system which can give this information anywhere near realtime with anything close to the required resolution. So in the absence of such I assume the information will have to be gathered from ground reports and areal surveys, which I would think will be extremely time consuming and labour intensive to gather and collate and form a full picture of the flooding.
- casefields 5y ago
  Even the biggest of floods is a localized problem. A fleet of drones can give you live feeds of the entire thing. The caveat is of course the military has the best ones, and there's an uneasy balance of allowing military use on home soil. Baltimore has been leading the charge on aerial surveillance: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-aerial-program-review-spy-plane-20201212-a5cnfitg75dexdsjgzcciqdhye-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-aerial-p...
  - billfruit 5y ago
    I doubt drones could be a solution for flood monitoring presently, flood events could last days, endurance could be an issue. Floods could affected regions of several hundred square kilometres, I think it might be impractical to cover that much area by drones.
manquer 5y ago
Technical issues apart , there are whole host of privacy issues with that kind of data. Stalking, theft to national security problems. Imagine if there is real time /continuous feed of your house, it would be very easy to know when you are there and not by just looking for cars parked in the driveway. Controlling access would be quite challenging.
codeecan 5y ago
this exists for city-wide using planes, from 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg from 4 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRa-AucbN6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRa-AucbN6k makes you think what they're doing today
aeroman 5y ago
One other thing to add - the Earth is really pretty cloudy. If you care about the clouds, new geostationary satellites are pretty good - (e.g. https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/ https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/). If you care about the surface, a lot of places are really cloudy, including some that are cloudy basically all the time - https://www.cloudsandclimate.com/blog/where_is_cloudiest_part2/ https://www.cloudsandclimate.com/blog/where_is_cloudiest_par...
yosito 5y ago
One of the closest public things you'll find to this is https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ It's only medium-range and only updated once daily, with some missing spots due to the coverage of satellite tracks, but there are hundreds of different data layers which can be really interesting to explore.
zacharycohn 5y ago
Zoom.earth is great for weather.
- jq-r 5y ago
  Try https://www.windy.com https://www.windy.com then. Will blow your mind.
grayfaced 5y ago
Rough numbers, back of envelope calculation: 500 trillion square meters on earth * 50 pixels per square meter * 3 byte pixel depth = 75 petabytes uncompressed. Assume 90% image compression and remove the 71% of earth that is oceans and you're down to a little over 2PB.
Cd00d 5y ago
Think of each pixel. If you want 1m resolution, you need at least one pixel for every meter of the planet. And, satellites can't be told to stay over land only. So, how many satellites do you need in your constellation to keep a 1s refresh time? The earth is 200 million miles^2 surface area. So, no. I sorta remember 4 day refresh at 3m resolution was the "wish I could get to" goal.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

https://planet.com https://planet.com (planet customer, no other affiliation)

5etho 5y ago
>contact sales thank you company, I'm gladly calling to check your services now
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ajcp 5y ago
I think OP was asking more for a live-stream type service, where this appears to be static imagery.
- shalmanese 5y ago
  This is the best that's currently available.
  - ajcp 5y ago
    No doubt, a great resource, was just trying to help get to the meat of the comment :D

hatsunearu 5y ago

https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ not quite real time (I'm not sure if that's even possible) but this is quite up to date. I used to to check out the smoke from last year. edit: you get pictures every 10 minutes of the whole globe, but the resolution is pretty bad, good enough to check the cloud coverage though

erk__ 5y ago
There is also https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ which seems to be a bit higher resolution, I think they are imagin the whole earth every other day.
- kylebarron 5y ago
  The two Sentinel-2 satellites together cover all land area of the Earth every 5 days, but are only 10-meter pixel resolution. > 10 days at the equator with one satellite, and 5 days with 2 satellites under cloud-free conditions which results in 2-3 days at mid-latitudes https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-2 https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-2
Toxygene 5y ago
YMMV, but I just checked my neighborhood out and the satellite image is ~5 years old.
- kylebarron 5y ago
  Once you pass a certain zoom (looks like zoom 11.5 here) the imagery is no longer recent. You can see the copyright statement change to "Microsoft", where it presumably just loads data from Bing maps. At lower zooms, where the copyright is something like "GOES-East", that's more real-time data because it comes from geostationary satellites that can take (low resolution) images every few minutes.
nikisweeting 5y ago
The imagery on here is 5-10 years older than the imagery on Google Maps for much of Quebec, not sure about other areas.
grawprog 5y ago
>but this is quite up to date. It's up to date zoomed out, but zoomed in seems to be similar to what google maps provides. The picture of the area I live is the same 10 year old picture on google maps, complete with a house that hasn't existed in almost as much time.

tpmx 5y ago

Maybe Starlink satellites should also feature a camera? They've already got the connectivity. You'd need a large constellation and this one seems like it will become huge.

Denvercoder9 5y ago
At 1 px/m², the Earth's surface is 5×10^14 pixels, so with the full constellation of 10,000 satellites and 1 fps that'd be 5×10^10 pixels/satellite/second (about a terabit/satellite/second uncompressed). If you can shoot 30 images per second, you'd need a 1.6 gigapixel camera. It's technically possible but not feasible.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "It's technically possible but not feasible." Not to mention that earth imaging satellites require approval by the government and, I believe, compliance with international regulations.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Why downvote? It's really frustrating to see people downvote a factual statement (as opposed to opinion) without giving any sort of correction to that information. If I'm wrong - show me! I don't need this sort of crap after working all day at a job I hate where my voice is basically worthless and a legitimate debate can't take place.
- tpmx 5y ago
  It would be quite useful at lower resolutions too, I think. Edit: The uncompressed bitrate comment is a bit like saying 1080p network video streaming will take decades to become feasible, because the incompressed bitrate is 1.485 gigabit/s...
  - bzbarsky 5y ago
    The obvious first bandwidth issue here is through the optical sensor, which is definitely pre-compression, no?

Denvercoder9 5y ago

Clouds would be a challenge.

paxys 5y ago

Not really feasible at a usable resolution. The number of satellites required to do this as well as the data bandwidth needed far exceeds our current capacity.

JoshTriplett 5y ago

In addition to cost, there are various national laws that restrict satellite imagery with resolution better than various thresholds.

yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
Which the article indicates, at least as it relates to the US and her companies, is no longer the case: > In July 2020, the KBA was dropped, and now the US government allows American companies to provide far higher-quality images of the region (so that objects the size of a person can be readily picked out).
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  That's one such agreement between two governments; there are numerous other laws and agreements that would impact anyone attempting to provide real-time imagery of substantial portions of Earth.
  - yaml-ops-guy 5y ago
    I thought the KBA was an amendment to US statutory law, not an 'agreement' between nations? What are the other laws and agreements to which you're alluding to, but weren't referenced in the article?
- skissane 5y ago
  KBA wasn't dropped, it still applies. The law is still on the books. KBA gives the regulator (NOAA) the authority to set a resolution limit for images of Israel. They are supposed to set it to be the best resolution commercially available from non-US providers. In 1998, NOAA set it at 2 metres. In July 2020, NOAA dropped it to 0.4 metres. NOAA had been dragging their feet about that – in 2018, evidence was presented to them of commercial availability of sub-2m resolution images of Israel from non-US providers, but they didn't accept it. Their argument apparently was that even if sub-2m resolution was commercially available, it wasn't "commercially available enough". One factor that changed their mind this time is widespread resale of foreign imagery by US resellers (the KBA only applies to sale of US-acquired imagery, US companies are legally free to resell foreign-acquired imagery.) KBA still limits US providers to a 0.4 metre resolution of Israel. When foreign commercial providers start offering better than 0.4 metre resolution of Israel, NOAA may drop the limit again. But they may drag their feet that time too.

caymanjim 5y ago

The short answer is no. High-resolution imagery comes from low-orbit satellites, which make a complete orbit about every two hours, and image long, narrow strips with each pass, taking days to image the whole planet. There are many of these satellites: commercial, non-military (publicly-accessible) governmental, and governmental (secret), of varying resolutions. These are also supplemented by aerial (plane) imagery. The net result is that updated-daily imagery exists, but real-time does not. While I'm not privy to the capabilities of the US military, the kind of real-time planet-wide surveillance that movies like Enemy of the State suggest doesn't exist planet-wide. The highest-resolution images on e.g. Google Maps are from planes, rather than satellites, and aren't imaged anywhere near daily. The only way to have constant, real-time imaging of a fixed location is with a geostationary satellite, which will be so far away (22,000 miles) that the resolution will be low. Given an unlimited budget, a huge constellation of hundreds or thousands of satellites could come close to real-time planet-wide imaging, but even then, you'd be getting views at different angles as various satellites took images, and you wouldn't ever have a clear directly-overhead view of people walking around.

notJim 5y ago
Couldn't starlink do something like this theoretically? Seems like it checks several of the boxes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
manigandham 5y ago
A fleet of drones that stay airborne can provide real-time feeds of a regional battlespace for military use. Cheaper, lower latency, higher quality data - but vulnerable to enemy airpower.
therein 5y ago
Even though it would be neither covert nor cost-effective, couldn't you use a constellation like Iridium and add some auto-compositing capabilities? The resolution and angles for your point of interest will change but you should be able to keep a near-constant coverage.

mvanaltvorst 5y ago

planet.com can get you a ~12 images per day [1] for a reasonable price. If cost really isn't an issue, I'm confident you could strike a deal with planet.com to place their next few new satellites into the specific orbit you want to up the frequency even more. [1]: https://www.planet.com/pulse/12x-rapid-revisit-announcement/ https://www.planet.com/pulse/12x-rapid-revisit-announcement/, as of June 2020.

rsync 5y ago
What is that reasonable price? It is not given on the page you linked…
- op00to 5y ago
  Are you looking at a 7-8 figure upside to your deal? It's reasonable. Are you looking for fun? Unreasonable.
- johnmcelhone 5y ago
  I believe 3m res data from them is around the $2 per square kilometre mark, however varies wildly depending on scale
hellbannedguy 5y ago
Could you divulge what you use the images for? Or, anyone who buys satellite images? I know about real estate, navigation, and I've heard that some business use them to forecast retail sales. I curious about other uses.
- mvanaltvorst 5y ago
  Tracking deforestation, melting of glaciers, basically anything geographic. If you're looking for things people profit from, you're right that some trading firms use satellite images to count cars in parking lots of e.g. Walmart to predict earnings reports. Similar things can be done on oil refineries for example (some satellites can even look /through/ oil tanks to look at oil levels by looking at specific wavelengths).

bhouston 5y ago

We will have this eventually. Piggy baking on STarlink next gen or similar should make this possible.

billfruit 5y ago

Even for emergencies like flooding where it is very important to know which areas are flooded and which are not, I think presently there is no satellite based system which can give this information anywhere near realtime with anything close to the required resolution. So in the absence of such I assume the information will have to be gathered from ground reports and areal surveys, which I would think will be extremely time consuming and labour intensive to gather and collate and form a full picture of the flooding.

casefields 5y ago
Even the biggest of floods is a localized problem. A fleet of drones can give you live feeds of the entire thing. The caveat is of course the military has the best ones, and there's an uneasy balance of allowing military use on home soil. Baltimore has been leading the charge on aerial surveillance: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-aerial-program-review-spy-plane-20201212-a5cnfitg75dexdsjgzcciqdhye-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-aerial-p...
- billfruit 5y ago
  I doubt drones could be a solution for flood monitoring presently, flood events could last days, endurance could be an issue. Floods could affected regions of several hundred square kilometres, I think it might be impractical to cover that much area by drones.

manquer 5y ago

Technical issues apart , there are whole host of privacy issues with that kind of data. Stalking, theft to national security problems. Imagine if there is real time /continuous feed of your house, it would be very easy to know when you are there and not by just looking for cars parked in the driveway. Controlling access would be quite challenging.

codeecan 5y ago

this exists for city-wide using planes, from 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg from 4 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRa-AucbN6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRa-AucbN6k makes you think what they're doing today

aeroman 5y ago

One other thing to add - the Earth is really pretty cloudy. If you care about the clouds, new geostationary satellites are pretty good - (e.g. https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/ https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/). If you care about the surface, a lot of places are really cloudy, including some that are cloudy basically all the time - https://www.cloudsandclimate.com/blog/where_is_cloudiest_part2/ https://www.cloudsandclimate.com/blog/where_is_cloudiest_par...

yosito 5y ago

One of the closest public things you'll find to this is https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ It's only medium-range and only updated once daily, with some missing spots due to the coverage of satellite tracks, but there are hundreds of different data layers which can be really interesting to explore.

zacharycohn 5y ago

Zoom.earth is great for weather.

jq-r 5y ago
Try https://www.windy.com https://www.windy.com then. Will blow your mind.

grayfaced 5y ago

Rough numbers, back of envelope calculation: 500 trillion square meters on earth * 50 pixels per square meter * 3 byte pixel depth = 75 petabytes uncompressed. Assume 90% image compression and remove the 71% of earth that is oceans and you're down to a little over 2PB.

Cd00d 5y ago

Think of each pixel. If you want 1m resolution, you need at least one pixel for every meter of the planet. And, satellites can't be told to stay over land only. So, how many satellites do you need in your constellation to keep a 1s refresh time? The earth is 200 million miles^2 surface area. So, no. I sorta remember 4 day refresh at 3m resolution was the "wish I could get to" goal.