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The DoD (or the NRO) had this tech in the 80s? Wasn’t this SAR originally in the form of ground penetrating radar invention for finding nukes in ground siloes?
Also used to track submerged submarines by detecting ocean surface disturbances caused by the underwater wake of the submarine. Same benefits: works at night and through cloud cover.
First of all, security. If your opponent has that kind of capability, you cannot meaningfully deploy tanks or any other vehicles anymore. Even infantry will suffer massively once the resolution goes up a notch. On a much smaller level, one could easily detect brake-in attempts on unguarded property.
Second, industrial espionage. Want to know how much the competition buys/sells? Plug this data into some form of image recognition.
Third, government control. From traffic over demonstrations to "unsocial" behavior, governments at the municipal level could easily inspect "their" people and control their behavior much more efficiently.
Combine this technology with the launch cadence and pricing of SpaceX and the implications are astounding. First of all, security. If your opponent has that kind of capability, you cannot meaningfully deploy tanks or any other vehicles anymore. Even infantry will suffer massively once the resolution goes up a notch. On a much smaller level, one could easily detect brake-in attempts on unguarded property. Second, indu…
But yeah, I agree with you about the potential. Also, presumably a constellation imaging the same location from multiple angles could synthesize a super high resolution 3D image?
This is cool tech and there are new players entering this field with even better capability. The Clinton era laws of optical resolution restrictions seems silly now with this tech in the commercial marketplace.
Article says they are by law limited to 50cm resolution. But there was another SAR satellite launched in March 2020 that claims 25cm resolution.[1] [1] https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-prnewswire/d35f7cb315af0...
Article says they are by law limited to 50cm resolution. But there was another SAR satellite launched in March 2020 that claims 25cm resolution.[1] [1] https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-prnewswire/d35f7cb315af0...
Your linked article says that satellite's company is Finnish, not US.
This is cool tech and there are new players entering this field with even better capability. The Clinton era laws of optical resolution restrictions seems silly now with this tech in the commercial marketplace.
I'm curious, which new competitors do you mean precisely? Do they have better capabilities than Capella? This seems like a great upcoming industry
I'd bet someone could pretty easily build an alarm that goes off every time one of these things is looking at you. That radar blast has got to be massive. This definitely couldn't be a 24/7 thing from those satellites. I wonder how much radar time one of those things has before it needs to recharge/refuel.
That had a much larger resolution (6m rather than 50cm), but the resolution is a function of frequency and antenna design as much as power.
The SAR concept essentially creates an image by sending out a known RF chirp and then, for each pixel of the image, correlating the response with the expected signal from that pixel. That correlation means that even if the received signal is below the noise floor you can create an image.
In the 9ghz range, does that mean a sub-1mm wire mesh could mitigate this? Asking for a hypothetical house renovator friend. Thompson's adage of when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro suggests that the tinfoil hat crowd could be able to corner the emerging domestic Faraday cage market.
It would also draw a lot of attention to you... So maybe not the best approach if you're trying to hide.