Aerial view of NYC at night

A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Some Buildings, Day or Night

A few months ago, a company called Capella Space launched a satellite capable of taking clear radar images of anywhere in the world, with incredible resolution. It can even see inside some buildings, including spotting airplanes inside hangars — though only in the case of lightweight structures.

December 16, 2020 | Source: Futurism | by Dan Robitzski

But don’t worry — the company says it can’t see inside your home.

A few months ago, a company called Capella Space launched a satellite capable of taking clear radar images of anywhere in the world, with incredible resolution. It can even see inside some buildings, including spotting airplanes inside hangars — though only in the case of lightweight structures, the company clarified, and not dense ones like high rises or residential homes.

And unlike most of the huge array of surveillance and observational satellites orbiting the Earth, its satellite Capella 2 can snap a clear picture during night or day, rain or shine.

“It turns out that half of the world is in nighttime, and half of the world, on average, is cloudy,” CEO Payam Banazadeh, a former system engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Futurism. “When you combine those two together, about 75 percent of Earth, at any given time, is going to be cloudy, nighttime, or it’s going to be both.”