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© (c) 2014 AFPJapan launches new satellite to survey disasters
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© (c) 2014 AFP
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Serrano
I bet this satellite is also used to spy on the United States, which insists on keeping unwanted military bases in the country.
Americanhonor
@serrano laughable. But it would be good to use to keep an eye on russian, north korean and chinese movements near Japans territorial waters and Im sure it would prove effective.
Cricky
The money spent could have resettled how many people from the not to be mentioned incident in the North? At least now more timely information might be available next time it happens...dependent on the company and Government.
Frungy
... paranoia much? Even if they were spying on the U.S., I don't think that the U.S. has much room to object given that the U.S. is spying on pretty much everyone.
A single satellite would, at best, orbit the earth once every 90 minutes, but that's a very low orbit, which causes a lot of problems, like an incredibly short life-span from constant adjustments that consume a non-renewable fuel supply. An average satellite orbits once a day, which means you're getting a single snap-shot of an area a day. A single satellite is insufficient to provide any useful data... however if the data from many satellites is combined you can get near-constant surveillance.
It is most likely that the data from this satellite will be fed into the U.S.'s surveillance data, and Japan will receive reports in return for their contribution. It will probably also devote some of its time to its intended purpose, but that leave a lot of time for it to do other stuff.
Sidekick
I bet this satellite is also used to spy on the United States
You wanna say that Japanese have no rights to spy on Americans ? Perhaps, they should ask a permission of Obama ?
falla
This is not a spy satellite, it's for disaster and environmental (forest, glaciers, land deformation, etc) monitoring mainly. They dont release specs for spy satellites. The images are all available to the public (but not free unfortunately).