5 ms·

What for?

• schoen 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel-1#Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel-1#Applications Sounds like some disaster response, some scientific, and some commercial uses.
  • stavros 2y ago
    And, obviously, lots of military uses.
    • schoen 2y ago
      I don't know how it's applied in practice, but apparently the treaty establishing ESA specifies that its space activities will be "for exclusively peaceful purposes" and they apparently have no missions that are classified or have any declared military purpose. I think there are other non-ESA European (and national) agencies that work on military use of space. For example, there's apparently an "EU Satellite Centre" based in Spain that is concerned with military use of space (and is not part of ESA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Satellite_Centre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Satellite_Centr... I do imagine that military users can probably buy or access data from ESA sources on the same terms as civilian users and that they probably do so.
      • stavros 2y ago
        Sorry, yes, I meant non-ESA, just satellites in general.
    • rurban 2y ago
      They have much much better resolution though. They can detect car plates, and probably also people looking up.
      • stavros 2y ago
        Do they? From the declassified Trump photo, it seems like the maximum resolution is a few tens of cm, very far from detecting car plates.
        • rurban 2y ago
          Remember that the CIA has 4 hubble's, the fifth spare one they did donate to point outwards. Of course their capabilities are highly classified, but it leaked.
          • schoen 2y ago
            That's NRO rather than CIA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...