Documenting that sinking feeling

Just like the Italian economy, since it’s very founding Venice has always sort of headed in the wrong direction–underwater. Not that the inhabitants needed any more proof of sinking. But, according to this article on BusinessInsider, a polar low earth orbiting satellite zipping 319 miles around the Earth called TerraSAR-X, is documenting Venice’s neighborhoods downward trends. […]

Finding the truth of a country’s economic state, from space

Surely, most people have seen this comparison of pictures. The comparison showing the differences in lights in China and North Korea from an image taken in 1992 versus an image taken in 2010. China changed a lot and of course North Korea not at all. Well, some people are attempting to sift more truth of […]

Spaceports everywhere!!

Okay, maybe not everywhere. But there are quite a few in the US according to Gizmodo in their article. 8 of them. I’m not as interested in “space tourism,” as I am in thinking this gives us some flexibility, if we’re smart about this, in replenishing satellite constellations. Not that I’d be against flying up […]

Space junk tracking and collecting

Two articles for the price of one in this aside. The Australians have figured out they can use their widefield array to help track debris orbiting the Earth, and that’s elaborated on (a little bit) in this article. This will help by adding another asset to the space situational awareness problem. It’s a bigger problem if […]

Why space matters: Imaging satellite operations, part 13—sweeping the Earth’s surface with pixels

Imagery satellites have come a long way since the Corona/Discovery program. Nowadays, there is so much more an imagery bird can deliver—and that’s what DigitalGlobe is giving to its customers. Before going on, I just want to clarify my reasons, again, for covering DigitalGlobe in this series. Primarily, they make it easy to find things. […]