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A U.S space satellite company is transforming the way we see our planet, and they’re removing every barrier in their way – including walls. Currently orbiting Earth at 7.5 km per second, Capella Space’s Capella-2 satellite is the world’s highest resolution synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite and is capable of imaging anything visible from the sky with a resolution of just 50 cm x 50 cm.
What makes this satellite even more special, however, is just how penetrating the radar is. Much like signal from your cell phone can penetrate through walls, in certain scenarios so too can the SAR technology. The images produced create an eerie landscape of ‘ghost’ buildings that allow users of the satellite imagery to gain a 3D insight onto the area in question, and the same technology also allows the Capella-2 to see straight through the clouds. This is the true strength of SAR – while most satellites require a clear day to capture a view of the ground, SAR satellites can be operational without relying on good weather.
Whilst a laser-vision satellite seems like a privacy nightmare, it is important to note that SAR does not allow companies to image the inside of buildings. Since the technology was unveiled, many claimed that the Capella-2 could be leveraged to spy on people even behind the safety of closed doors, but this is unfounded – although the radar can pass through walls, Capella claim the waves are too weak to image anything inside, as can be seen in the image above.
This fact does not prevent SAR from being utilized in global surveillance, however. Capella Space are pushing forward with plans to deploy enough satellites to provide hourly coverage of everywhere on the Earth’s surface, a feat that would change satellite imaging dramatically. The satellite company claims that such coverage would enable response to crises to be more informed, faster and better executed.
“One of the most recent events that could have used our capability were the millions of acres of the West Coast of the United States that were devastated by wildfires and completely blanketed a third of our country in hazardous opaque smoke,” states CEO and founder Payam Banazadeh in a statement.
“If we can’t see what’s happening around us, we can’t make good decisions. SAR allows us, our first responders, our policy makers, and the world to see. That is critical.”
So how does a SAR satellite work? Much like other radar technologies, SAR sends pulses of radio waves to impact the desired area and bounce off, creating an echo that can be detected upon its return. The echoes are then stitched together by software to create an image. Using SAR to image the Earth is not exclusive to Capella, with similar radars used aboard many different spacecraft, including the Space Shuttle Endeavor, though Capella-2 is currently the clear leader in high-resolution imaging.
Now, Capella are releasing a new product called Spotlight, in which customers can pay for access to long-exposure shots of specific areas of interest. These images are captured for as long as 60 seconds, creating an extreme level of detail that is of interest to both scientists and the military. Luckily, the product isn’t available to everyone – a vetting procedure is carried out on any people requesting images.
With the capability of monitoring the entire planet every hour, is it easy to see why the satellite throws up privacy concerns. Debates have already raged throughout 2019 and 2020 over the use of facial recognition, and surveillance technologies such as this only adds fuel to the fire. Despite the concerns, Capella are pushing forward with the technology, claiming that it will not be used for sinister applications and instead will be a force for good.
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A few months ago, a company called Capella Space launched a satellite capable of taking clear radar images of anywhere in the world, with incredible resolution. It can even see inside some buildings, including spotting airplanes inside hangars — though only in the case of lightweight structures, the company clarified, and not dense ones like high rises or residential homes.
And unlike most of the huge array of surveillance and observational satellites orbiting the Earth, its satellite Capella 2 can snap a clear picture during night or day, rain or shine.
“It turns out that half of the world is in nighttime, and half of the world, on average, is cloudy,” CEO Payam Banazadeh, a former system engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Futurism. “When you combine those two together, about 75 percent of Earth, at any given time, is going to be cloudy, nighttime, or it’s going to be both. It’s invisible to you, and that portion is moving around.”
On Wednesday, Capella launched a platform allowing governmental or private customers to request images of anything in the world — a capability that will only get more powerful with the deployment of six additional satellites next year. Is that creepy from a privacy point of view? Sure. But Banazadeh says that it also plugs numerous holes in the ways scientists and government agencies are currently able to monitor the planet.
“There’s a bunch of gaps in how we’re currently observing Earth from space — the majority of the sensors we use to observe earth are optical imaging sensors,” he said. “If it’s cloudy, you’re going to see the clouds, not what’s happening under the clouds. And if there’s not much light, you’re going to have a really hard time getting an image that is useful.”
By contrast, Capella can peer right through cloud cover, and see just as well in the daylight as in total darkness. That’s because instead of optical imaging, it uses synthetic aperture radar, or SAR.
SAR works similarly to how dolphins and bats navigate using echolocation. The satellite beams down a powerful 9.65 GHz radio signal toward its target, and then collects and interprets the signal as it bounces back up into orbit.
“At that frequency, the clouds are pretty much transparent,” Banazadeh told Futurism. “You can penetrate clouds, fog, moisture, smoke, haze. Those things don’t matter anymore. And because you’re generating your own signal, it’s as if you’re carrying a flashlight. You don’t care if it’s day or night.”
Capella didn’t invent SAR. But Banazadeh says it’s the first U.S. company to offer the technology, and the first worldwide to offer a more accessible platform for potential customers to use.
“Part of the challenge in this industry is that working with satellite imagery providers has been difficult,” he explained. “You might have to send a bunch of emails to find out how they could collect images for you. In some instances, you might have to send a fax.”
Another innovation, he says, is the resolution at which Capella’s satellites can collect imagery. Each pixel in one of the satellite’s images represents a 50-centimeter-by-50-centimeter square, while other SAR satellites on the market can only get down to around five meters. When it comes to actually discerning what you’re looking at from space, that makes a huge difference.
Cityscapes are particularly intriguing. Skyscrapers poke out of the Earth like ghostly, angular mushrooms — and, if you look carefully, you notice that you can see straight through some of them, though the company clarified that this is a visual distortion rather than truly seeing through the structures.
Right now, that’s as good a resolution as is possible with SAR. Not because of technological limitations — Capella hopes to improve with subsequent satellite launches down the road — but because of U.S. law, export controls, and licensing requirements.
As long as the company don’t improve the resolution a hair beyond what it’s at now, Banazadeh said its satellites can image any part of the world that a paying customer asks for.
Those customers, he explained, could be government agencies monitoring a hostile military for movement or tracking an airport for activity. That’s where that wall-penetrating vision comes into play. Banazadeh gave the example of an airport where planes hidden under a canopy became clear as day thanks to SAR satellites. The customers may also be scientists peering through the thick clouds of the Amazon rainforest to track deforestation, or even investors checking up on global supply chains.
Possibilities abound. Train two SAR satellites on the same target and they can actually image targets in three dimensions down to minute differences in height. Banazadeh said one group is already using that trick to measure how much oil is being stored in open-top oil tanks or how much is being extracted from an open-pit mine on a given day — and using that information as a proxy for the value of various commodities. That can also help authorities monitor infrastructure for possible safety issues: SAR can track how much the ground above a tunnel sinks over time, for example.
“We’re making it very easy for people with all sorts of backgrounds to interact with a company like us, and that inevitably is going to bring a more users that previously couldn’t access this market,” Banazadeh said. “That’s our hope.”
