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Comment by trothamel | Hacker News Reader

88 of these are Planet Labs's Dove satellites, which are 4kg, 3U (10x10x30cm) satellites. From what I understand, the goal of these is to image the entire earth every day at 3-5 meter resolution.

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Don't forget that Planet just bought Terra Bella who has a fleet that can image at a higher resolution then Planet's

Surely the usa military or intelligence wouldn't be happy with that, right? Who would have access to this information?

The US has surprisingly few restrictions on satellite imagery until you get below ~50cm resolution. Beyond a short list of nations/groups that the US has strict export controls with (e.g. N. Korea), there aren't any restrictions at all on who can be sold imagery. Other countries (e.g. Canada) actually have considerably more restrictions on collecting and selling imagery.

Is the resolution of commercial imaging products limited right now by law or tech?

It was law until recently. WorldView-3 could image at a higher resolution than it was allowed to sell when first launched.

http://blog.digitalglobe.com/news/resolutionrestrictionslift...

It depends. There is some debate as to how one measures resolution. With nanosats one has the option of taking many low-rez images and combining them into a higher rez. So does it depend on what is taken by the sat or what is delivered to the customer? Or what if the customer is the one combining the images?

Planet Labs is a US company so presumably they have US government approval for their sats. Their resolution is really low by today's standards so their imagery may not be considered sensitive. Or maybe they just blur out the same things that every other satellite company blurs out.

Planet labs is a us company so they are subject to ITAR and the commerce control list.

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