Satellite pictures now just a click away

06:13 PM ET 06/23/98

         
            By Jim Wolf
            WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Until recently the exclusive realm of
top brass and spies, sharp satellite pictures went on sale
Tuesday to anyone with a credit card and Internet access.
            The images, available for as little as $7.95, appear on a
new Microsoft web site, known as the TerraServer
(www.terraserver.microsoft.com).
            The site bills itself as the world's largest Web database,
most detailed global atlas and a prime example of how technology
is yielding quick access to an incredible wealth of information.
            It was to be formally unveiled Wednesday at Federal
Enterprise Day, an event for government computer experts.
            The debut of the on-line archive marks a new step toward
ending the monopoly that the national security establishments of
advanced countries held on the fruit of spying from space for
nearly four decades.
            Among the images featured on the site are formerly
classified Russian spy photographs sharp enough to pick out
objects 2.2 yards (two meters) across.
            With such ``two-meter resolution,'' a viewer would be able
to search for a shot of a neighbor's back yard, for instance,
and download it directly to a desktop computer.
            The public availability of satellite pictures is not new.
Spot Images of France, for instance, has been selling 11-yard
resolution pictures for years and sharper material has become
available recently.
            But the advent of the TerraServer puts the world's largest
collection of two-meter resolution images, once considered spy
quality, a click away on the Web.
            ``Previously, it took weeks or months to get imagery,'' said
John Pike, defense analyst at the Federation of American
Scientists. ``Now it takes minutes.''
            Browsing the archive is free. Searches may be by city,
region or latitude and longitude coordinates. Users can then pan
or zoom within the digital picture by ``pointing and clicking.''
            The price of downloaded images ranges from $7.95 to $24.95
depending on the size of the area covered, said John Hoffman,
president of Aerial Images, a Raleigh, North Carolina, provider
of high-resolution satellite imagery, including the Russian
archives.
            ``We're going to be adding data to grow this thing on a
regular basis'' as often as weekly, Hoffman said in a telephone
interview.
            In addition to the possibility of downloading pictures,
viewers can order Kodak brand photographic prints of digital
images from $12.95 to $39.95 for 20- x 26-inch (51 x 66 cm)
poster size.
            The site also features the rich harvest of the U.S.
Geological Survey's long-running project to photograph the
United States from aircraft. Some of those images are sharp
enough to detect objects only one yard across.
            The images have many potential uses, including cartography,
urban planning, mineral exploration and disaster relief. Public
interest groups may use them to zero in on polluters.
            Among the expected customers may be foreign governments that
cannot afford their own satellite systems.
            But the federal rules under which U.S. firms were granted
licenses to enter the commercial satellite reconnaissance
business bars sales of images to countries such as Iran, Libya,
Cuba and North Korea.
            Thus, the TerraServer system will not let users from
Internet service providers in denied nations download satellite
shots, thought it would have no way of knowing if a user in
another country was acting a front for a black-listed nation.
            ``We have no way of knowing who's on the other end of the
computer,'' Hoffman said. ``The only thing we can do is block
specific countries from doing a transaction.''
            Jeffrey Richelson, author of ``America's Secret Eyes in
Space'' and an expert on space reconnaissance, said the sharpest
shots available to the U.S. intelligence community were about 6
inches across, sharp enough to see -- but not read -- a license
plate from more than 100 miles above the earth.
           
 ^REUTERS@