3 ms·
It's still very patchy, and likely will be for another decade of growth. Earth has 500 million km^2 of surface area. A 24-bit, 10 meter resolution recording o
by mapt 1y ago
It's still very patchy, and likely will be for another decade of growth. Earth has 500 million km^2 of surface area. A 24-bit, 10 meter resolution recording of Earth's surface (a shoebox sized satellite in LEO can do this) at 1 image per minute, plus a 1 meter resolution recording at 1 image per hour, would make tracking relatively easy (modulo weather), and necessitate 36 uncompressed petabytes per day of data handling, probably more like 360 uncompressed petabytes when you factor in overlaps of satellite planes and imaging areas.
We can do this for, say, all the airfields in Russia, today. But the world is a much bigger place.
As laser communications equipment becomes more standardized and the LEO comms and LEO remote sensing constellations continue to grow, this will slowly expand in scope. But tracking and deconfliction of moving objects is just an inherently difficult thing to do with any confidence; It wouldn't be feasible at all without various AI algorithms. There are far lower hanging fruit as yet unpicked.