Earth Imaging Constellation Site
If you like Google Earth, you will find this new website fun to explore. I signed up today on the Planet Lab’s new “Explorer Beta” site that allows you to search through their growing collection of images of the entire Earth taken nearly every day by their very large constellation of very small satellites. They call their spacecraft Doves because they are launched in flocks. What’s new about Planet Lab’s imagery is that it is a near real-time view from orbit .... well only a few days old .... but you don’t have to wait for the next massive update by Google Earth to see what’s changed. Try it. CTRL + Click on:
https://www.planet.com/explorer/
The site just below has dramatic images of the Oroville California dam with its exploding spillway .... a very good application of the Dove Constellation’s capabilities. Crisis management required current information. You can watch the water level behind the dam go down in the successive Dove images. CTRL + Click on:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/10/planets-new-explorer-beta-lets-anyone-time-travel-through-geospatial-images/
The Dove Constellation’s daily coverage is still sort of thin. For any given spot on the planet, lots of days are still blank because the constellation is still incomplete. The constellation is like a line scanner with missing pixels .... but they are launching more satellites .... in flocks. Nevertheless, I had great fun looking at last week’s wildfire in Naples. See images below. When fully operational with daily updates available, you can see how helpful this information would be to the forestry people anywhere around the world.
Just before the Naples fire started. The left half of the image is from one satellite’s pass when lighting was poor. The right side is in full daylight, later in the day. Their data processing “stitches” images from different spacecraft together to offer the most useful image for any chosen spot for that day, even if compromised.
This image from a few days later shows the fire almost under control. Here, one Dove satellite caught the whole area of interest in good light. The smoke plume is seen from our back deck.
To learn more about Planet Lab’s constellation and data delivery system. CTRL + Click on:
