Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 18—“Look at the stars, look how they shine for you…”

“…Yeah, they were all yellow.” So, a small confession before continuing: One of the reasons you haven’t seen any lessons for the past few weeks regarding the imagery colors is because I’ve been stuck on this color thing for a little while. I think part of dilemma is just going through, color by color, has been […]

Is there really a “Space Race?” (cue “Chariots of Fire”)

“there can be only one?” There are headlines so full of assumptions, you sometimes have to take a step back, and think long and hard about the “angle” of the article. In this instance, I’m referring to The Age, an Australian newspaper with an article, dated November 9, headlined “China to win space race unless […]

Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 17—The Green Hills of Earth

Green—a word associated with jungles, a description of newbies, in songs sung by muppets about the difficulties of being it, and songs sung by fictional spacefarers about the qualities of their homeworld. Those spacefarers might be fictional, but for certain real space imagery operators, green describes a capability of a satellite payload. Green is one […]

Curious about spy satellites? Now there’s an app for that!

To say there are a lot of interesting satellites orbiting the Earth with unknown missions, at least unknown to the public, belonging either to the US or other nations, is an understatement. And when governments withhold the number of, ahem, “black” satellites orbiting the Earth as the US did last year, well, that just encourages […]

Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 16—“Blue are the streets, And all the trees are too”

Who could forget 1999’s most famous dance single? But does anyone remember the song’s group?? Enough dancing—time to talk about satellite operations until we’re blue in the face (sorry, couldn’t resist). As mentioned in the previous lesson, this lesson is about DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite and the blue spectrum of its imagery payload. Mainly, what is […]