Chemical Forums
General Forums => Generic Discussion => Topic started by: Enthalpy on October 23, 2022, 07:41:25 AM
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Hello everyone and everybody!
In the best case, news channels depend on their reporters to harvest information. In wars, earthquakes and other difficult situations, the reporter wasn't or can't be at the right place at the right time. The paper then regrettably ends with "we can't verify independently the information".
This can improve, and to my opinion it should. Microsatellites have the capability to make good images of the Earth's surface. SSTL did it around 1990. Maybe they have grown big and expensive meanwhile, but then other actors can do that for few M$, cheap for an information channel.
Microsatellites can have a natural image resolution around 2m, better is possible. This suffices to tell how many buildings are damaged, if a bridge stands, where tanks and aeroplanes are, how large a flood or a fire is.
One microsatellite sees each point on the Earth (excepted near the poles, depending on the orbit) after 24h at most. It sees the surface some ±58° away from the nadir at most, but two microsatellites phased 180° on one orbit see each point ±39° from the nadir; this need a more difficult active control of the orbit (consider few 10M$) which also lets the satellites overfly each point of Earth near noon.
Several ground stations spread at varied longitudes are desired to receive the information early. Image compression lets transmit faster, and the operator can determine in a wide rough picture the interesting area to be transmitted.
Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, the news agencies... could easily afford this means, individually or collectively.