“My immediate reaction is that no one bothered with high resolution because it’s in the middle of a desert and high-resolution imagery is incredibly expensive to own and distribute.” “I’ve not heard of any commercial company trying to restrict things,” says Doug Specht, a geography lecturer at the University of Westminster in London. “Probably the simplest solution is that a money interest is purchasing those images at the highest level, where they maintain an exclusive right to them.” “If there’s no Maxar images acquired over an area that is experiencing rapid economic investment, something fishy is going on,” Van Den Hoek says.

One of the main commercial uses for satellite imagery is to help companies understand how their rivals or entire countries are faring in the global marketplace-to see, for example, “how many cranes are active on the Manhattan skyline right now, or oil tankers are in port,” says Jamon Van Den Hoek, a geography professor and director of the Conflict Ecology Lab at Oregon State University.

Google satellite picture of my house