The design/build firm I’m working for doesn’t have a drone, so we rely heavily on Google satellite images of the houses we’re working on. But sometimes the level of detail leaves something to be desired, and/or we only have access to old imagery that doesn’t account for recent updates to the landscape.
An NYC-based startup called Near Space Labs has a solution that’s more affordable than paying for custom satellite footage. The company uses weather balloons, which they call Swifts.
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These Swifts are not only an order of magnitude less expensive than satellites, but also have a much lower carbon footprint, as they don’t need to be launched in a rocket. Instead they noiselessly drift 65,000 feet up to the stratosphere, and take photos of the earth below at a shockingly crisp 10cm resolution.
“The stratosphere gives us a better vantage point for a much lower price than airplanes and satellites,” the company writes. “We work around clouds more easily too.”
“The biggest surprise for me when I joined Near Space Labs,” says David Raleigh, the company’s Head of Data Engineering, “was that we were getting imagery that could compete with satellite companies within the first six months I was there.”
“From the vantage point of the stratosphere we can cover a city in a single flight,” the company writes. “For reference, in one flight we can capture all of New York City’s five boroughs. After a flight, we automatically process all the data and upload it to the cloud, so you can access it only hours after it was captured.”
Their prices are crazy low, starting at just $50 for a square kilometer, and dropping to as low as $10/sq. km if you need 390 sq. km or more. What the company hasn’t done a good job of yet is listing what areas they’ve already covered; it’s not clear if you must commission them to capture footage of a specific region, and/or if there will eventually be a menu you can choose from.
Source: core77