40 cm satellite imagery starts today by Charlie Loyd.
From the post:
Starting this morning, DigitalGlobe has new permission from the government to sell satellite imagery at 40 cm (16 inch) resolution, up from 50 cm (20 inches). The limit will drop further to 25 cm (10 inches) later this summer, once they’ve launched WorldView-3, which will be the first private satellite technically capable of that resolution. The numbers don’t tell the story, though—let’s look at some pictures.
If going from 50 cm resolution to 40 cm resolution sounds like a small change at first, remember that we’re talking about square pixels. When square A is only ¼ longer on a side than square B, it contains more than 150% as much area. Therefore, a slightly smaller linear size means a lot more clarity. I’ve taken some aerial imagery of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and resampled it to demonstrate:
…
And when the market explodes for 25cm (10 inches) later this summer?
Will that drive demand for < 25cm (10 inches) resolution? And pirating the image feeds, will that drive expansion of the NSA's melting data center? I first saw this in a tweet by Mapbox.