Satellite Maps

By: John Glick

If you, like many people, have been tracking the expense of your government, you would have noticed that apart from social and defense spending, the single biggest proportion of the national budget goes into space exploration. Governments all over the world spent billions of dollars every year sending satellites into space to gather information ranging from critical intelligence, weather reports and even seemingly mundane images like satellite maps.

Before we get into the details of what satellite maps really are, we need to understand how a satellite really works. In very elementary terms, a satellite is any body or object that revolves around a planet or other heavenly body in a circular or elliptical path. By this explanation, the moon is earth’s original satellite. Still as we have seen, most governments with the money and the wherewithal have launched their own man made satellites into space. Because of the benefits that such man made satellites have given us, a satellite nowadays refers almost exclusively to such devices placed in space with the explicit purpose of gathering data or collecting information. And one of the best examples of such useful information collected by satellites, is satellite maps.

Satellite maps are useful to a far and wide range of users. The weather story they provide helps meteorological departments provide advance storm and disaster warnings. The environmental information they provide helps environmental agencies pinpoint distress spots and get into action. The intelligence information of satellite maps has often been relied on to provide life saving information for defensive purposes. And the general information they provide have helped prospectors identify sources of natural deposits to create mining opportunities.

Probably the widest used instance of a satellite map generator is Google Earth – the real time satellite map imaging software developed by internet company Google. I came across this innovative work during a web search and have been using it ever since to generate my personal satellite maps. No longer do I need to dream about how various parts of the earth looks when seen from space. Whether it is the Grand Canyon in Colorado, or the Vatican from above, or even Red Square in the heart of Russia, all I need to do to view it is to type the name into Google Earth. The satellite map is presented to me in striking detail. Some innovative users have already begun using these satellite maps to advertise their products and services. Google Earth is all set to become the best known case of collaborative satellite map technology in the world.

Companies like Space Imaging (www.spaceimaging.com) have made it their full time calling to receive satellite map information and analyze and describe the results to a far and wide range of industry segments. In addition to providing critical information to governments and industries, they likewise use the satellite maps to generate aerial posters of popular earth landmarks. These are sold to collectors and even the plain mere curious. As for me, I’ll use my trusted Google Earth to generate my own satellite maps. Maybe I also can become a satellite map services provider someday!