Satellites, even the most modern ones, do not have such accurate optics to recognize a car number or text. These “cinematic” myths in a conversation with RIA Novosti were dispelled by Milana Elerdova, General Director of Terra Tech “- a commercial operator Roscosmos for the provision of services in the field of space imagery.
“The best resolution as of the current day will be for Maxar’s Legion spacecraft planned for launch in 2021. This is 29 centimeters per pixel,” the expert said and added that with this resolution, the license plates cannot be seen, however you can distinguish between trees and crowds.
According to Elerdova, such images are the most profitable for satellite imagery operators. Their price starts at 10 cents per square kilometer.
Earlier, Roscosmos specialists suggested to build a “space gun” to launch satellites. Thus, experts intend to launch small satellites with carrier shells from electromagnetic guns. Among the options proposed by the researchers are a linear railgun and an annular mass accelerator.