Astronaut’s Photos From the ISS Make Earth Look Like a Painting
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Camera on North Korean Missile Captures Earth from Space
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Microsoft Can Make Pictures from Space Look As Good as Drone Photos
Microsoft has announced a set of new partnerships and capabilities for Azure Space, including the ability for satellites to "see" through clouds along with enhanced image fidelity.
Azure Space is Microsoft's program that it launched last year designed to help people and organizations achieve more on and off the planet. Microsoft is adding to that program with several new partnerships and capabilities that make imaging from space better and more useful.
Azure Space ecosystem showing multi-orbits and geospatial capabilities through Machine Learning. | Microsoft
Microsoft says that 67% of the world is covered in clouds, which makes it difficult for Earth observation from space to have accurate and regular observations. To address this, Microsoft developed SpaceEye.
SpaceEye is Azure Space's artificial intelligence-based (AI) system that generated daily cloud-free optical and multispectral imagery for the planet. The system uses the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument from the Sentinel-1 mission as a baseline data source, as radar data is not affected by cloud cover.
Microsoft
"SpaceEye then combines this radar data with historical optical imagery to generate an AI image prediction of what it looks under the clouds," Microsoft explains. "This can unlock significant use cases in agriculture, land-use monitoring, and disaster response among others."
Additionally, Microsoft Azure is being used to prepare images and make them appear higher fidelity through Microsoft's Project Turing. Project Turing enhances images using semantic super-resolution to allow satellite imagery to be increased in resolution and comparable to in-atmosphere aerial photos. Microsoft says this will greatly aid human perception of overhead imagery, and the technology is already running on Azure to enhance Bing Maps around the world and currently already covers over 50% of all user requests.
Microsoft
Microsoft is also partnering with Airbus to bring high-resolution satellite imagery and elevation data in Azure. The company says that it is part of expanding its mission for Azure Space to make it the best platform for the space community. Through this partnership, Airbus will feed Azure Maps with its SPOT 1.5m, Pléiades 50cm, and Pléiades Neo 30cm resolution satellite imagery and WorldDEM4Ortho elevation data.
Microsoft goes into further detail about how that geospatial imagery opens new cloud computing scenarios in a blog post on Azure.
Image credits: Header image via Microsoft.
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NASA’s New Landsat 9 Satellite Snaps First Photos of a Changing Planet
The Landsat 9, a joint mission between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has captured its first photos as part of its mission to document changes to the planet and the impacts of climate change.
NASA says that the Landsat 9, which was launched on September 27, is designed to help people better manage Earth's natural resources and understand how climate change is impacting the environment. The Landsat program has collected 50 years of space-based Earth observation, which Landsat 9 will add to.
Since 1972, the joint NASA/ U.S. Geological Survey Landsat series of Earth Observation satellites have continuously acquired images of the Earth’s land surface, providing uninterrupted data to help land managers and policymakers make informed decisions about natural resources and the environment.
The photos shared by NASA and the USGS show the incredible resolution of the Lansat 9 camera. The uncropped photos are incredibly detailed and nearly 60-megapixels in size, with stunning crops published to the Landsat 9 gallery that still measure an impressive 18-megapixels.
For example, below is the first image collected by Landsat 9, which shows remote coastal islands and inlets of the Kimberly region of Western Australia:
That photo has been cropped for distribution as seen below. In the top middle section of the image, the Mitchell River carves through sandstone, while to the left Bigge Island and the Coronation Islands stand out in the Indian Ocean. NASA writes that Australia is a major international partner of the Landsat 9 program, and operates one of the Landsat Ground Network stations in Alice Springs.
Landsat 9 -- which replaces Landsat 7 -- is similar in design to its predecessor, Landsat 8 which was launched in 2013 and remains in orbit, but has several key improvements over both. NASA says that the new satellite transmits data with higher radiometric resolution, which allows it to detect more subtle differences in a landscape and is especially useful over darker areas like water or forests.
Landsat 9 can differentiate more than 16,000 shades of a given wavelength color, which is a huge improvement over the 256 shades that Landsat 7 could detect. NASA says that this increased sensitivity will help NASA and the USGS see more subtle changes than they could previously.
In the Western U.S., in places like the Navajo Nation as seen in this Landsat 9 image, Landsat and other satellite data help people monitor drought conditions and manage irrigation water. With only 85 rain gauges to cover more than 27,000 square miles, satellite data and climate models are filling the gaps to help the Navajo Nation monitor drought severity.
Landsat 9 carries two instruments that are designed to work together to capture a broad range or wavelengths: the Operational Land Imager 2 and the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2 as shown below:
“Landsat 9’s first images capture critical observations about our changing planet and… provides critical data about Earth's landscapes and coastlines seen from space,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says. “This program has the proven power to not only improve lives but also save lives. NASA will continue to work with USGS to strengthen and improve accessibility to Landsat data so decision-makers in America -- and around the world -- better understand the devastation of the climate crisis, manage agricultural practices, preserve precious resources and respond more effectively to natural disasters.”
The white sands of Pensacola Beach stand out in this Landsat 9 image of the Florida Panhandle of the United States, with Panama City visible under some popcorn-like clouds. Landsat and other remote sensing satellites help to track changes to U.S. coastlines, including urban development and potential impacts of rising sea levels. From Oct. 31, 2021, the first day of data collection for Landsat 9.
NASA's Landsat 9 team is in the midst of its 100-day check-out period of the newly-launched satellite, a period in which they will test its systems, subsystems, and calibrate its instruments in preparation for hanging the mission over to the USGS in January. The USGS will operate both the Landsat 9 and Landsat 8 together to collect around 1,500 photos of Earth's surface each day, covering the entire planet every eight days.
“The incredible first pictures from the Landsat 9 satellite are a glimpse into the data that will help us make science-based decisions on key issues including water use, wildfire impacts, coral reef degradation, glacier and ice-shelf retreat and tropical deforestation,” the USGS Acting Director Dr. David Applegate says.
Sediments swirl in Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair in this Landsat 9 image of both Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, from Oct. 31, 2021. The Great Lakes serve as sources of freshwater, recreational activity, transport, and habitat for the upper-midwestern United States, and water quality remains a high priority. In warmer months, Landsat 9 observes swirls of green algae which can become harmful algal blooms. Landsat 9 will be able to help scientists and resource managers identify those blooms early, identifying areas to test further.
Landsat 9 data will be available to the public for free once the satellite being normal operations in 2022.
Header photo: The city of Kathmandu, Nepal, seen at the bottom left of this Landsat 9 image, lies in a valley south of the Himalayan Mountains between Nepal and China. Glaciers, and the lakes formed by glacial meltwater, are visible in the top middle of this image. In High Mountain Asia, many communities rely on meltwater from glaciers – and Landsat can help track how those glaciers are changing in a warming climate. Previous studies with Landsat have documented shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers, as well as changing lake levels the adjacent Tibetan plateau. From Oct. 31, 2021, the first day of data collection for Landsat 9.
Image credits: Photos via NASA.
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These Photos from Space Make Earth Look like Water World
Photo Credit: Thomas Pesquet / ESA
European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet recently published a set of images from the International Space Station of Earth that show only water and clouds, which makes the planet look very different than it is normally seen.
Thomas Gautier Pesquet is a French aerospace engineer and took part in the European Space Agency's Expedition 50 and 51. He recently returned to the ISS for a six month stay via the SpaceX Crew Dragon.
🌎 Our blue marble. Sometimes, there's just no land in sight, even from our 400 km crow's nest. I think of all the sailors and explorers who traveled the world on solitary expeditions ⛵️ #MissionAlpha pic.twitter.com/sQ0F33DEZm
-- Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) May 26, 2021
Pesquet recently shared a set of three images of Earth that he took from what he refers to as "the crow's nest" of the International Space Station, but is very likely the Cupola Observation Module.
The cupola is a small module designed for the observation of operations outside the station such as robotic activities, the approach of vehicles, and spacewalks. Its six side windows and a direct nadir viewing window provide spectacular views of Earth and celestial objects. The windows are equipped with shutters to protect them from contamination and collisions with orbital debris or micrometeorites. The cupola house the robotic workstation that controls the Canadarm2.
As noted by Digital Trends, Pesquet's reference to Earth as a "blue marble" is likely in reference to the famous image of Earth taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972.
Astronauts on the ISS have some of the best views of Earth and the individual members, who are regularly rotating, have uploaded thousands of images over the years. Last year, NASA paid homage to its favorites in its top 20 photos of Earth taken from the space station.
Photo Credit: Thomas Pesquet / ESA
What makes Pesquet's photos unique amongst the vast number that have been shared over the years is that this group of three shows no land at all. Considering that the Earth is made up of 70% water, it does at first seem strange that photos with this perspective are rare. However, the focus on land for most of those who photograph the planet from space is likely because humans spend very little time on the vast openness of the sea, which makes it usually less interesting for the average photographer or even viewer.
Photo Credit: Thomas Pesquet / ESA
But Pesquet's images are so jarringly unusual that they look like a completely different world, or perhaps the one from the 1995 action science-fiction movie starting Kevin Costner.
The scientists and astronauts have a wide range of top-of-the-line cameras and lenses available to them, but the best photos always require the best photographic eye, which Pesquet clearly possesses.
Image credits: Photos by Thomas Pesquet / ESA
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