Tiny satellites that photograph the entire planet, every day | Will Marshall
Satellite imaging has revolutionized our knowledge of the Earth, with detailed images of nearly every street corner readily available online. But Planet Labs' Will Marshall says we can do better...
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The Earth needs no introduction. It needs no introduction in part because the Apollo 17 astronauts, when they were hurtling around the moon in 1972, took this iconic image. It galvanized a whole generation of human beings to realize that we're on Spaceship Earth, fragile and finite as it is, and that we need to take care of it. But while this picture is beautiful, it's static, and the Earth is constantly changing. It's changing on days' time scales with human activity. And the satellite imagery we have of it today is old. Typically, years old. And that's important because you can't fix what you can't see. What we'd ideally want is images of the whole planet every day. So, what's standing in our way? What&...
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The Earth needs no introduction. It needs no introduction in part because the Apollo 17 astronauts, when they were hurtling around the moon in 1972, took this iconic image. It galvanized a whole generation of human beings to realize that we're on Spaceship Earth, fragile and finite as it is, and that we need to take care of it. But while this picture is beautiful, it's static, and the Earth is constantly changing. It's changing on days' time scales with human activity. And the satellite imagery we have of it today is old. Typically, years old. And that's important because you can't fix what you can't see. What we'd ideally want is images of the whole planet every day. So, what's standing in our way? What&...
