Now we can all Watch Earth in HD | First Public Video of our Planet is Beamed back from Space

While satellites frequently beam down mesmerising images of Earth, detailed video footage of our planet has, up until now, been lacking.

Now one San Francisco-based start-up is aiming to change this by using its own low-cost satellite to provide the first ever public high-definition video of Earth from space.

The footage reveals details down to the metre-scale, such as cars moving on roads and vessels travelling through shipping lanes – all from a satellite positioned 600 kms above the planet.

The video was taken by the SkySat-1 satellite and showcases high-resolution views of Tokyo, Bangkok, Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Aleppo, Syria.

While it’s currently available for free, the group, Skybox Imaging, plans to sell the footage to businesses in the near future.

SkySat-1, which was launched in November, captured up to 90-second video clips at 30 frames per second to create the footage.

The U.S. group is now planning a constellation of 24 satellites that will be able to cover almost the entire expanse of the Earth.

Its larger goal is to sell what it can analyse about the global economy to companies, providing details such as supply chain monitoring and the movement of humanitarian aid.

‘The most revolutionary fact is that SkySat-1 was built and launched for more than an order of magnitude less cost than traditional sub-meter imaging satellites,’ said Tom Ingersoll, chief executive of Skybox.

Satellites today are capable of taking imagery better than a metre in resolution, but they weigh thousands of kilograms. SkySat-1 is 20 times smaller than traditional satellites.

The circuitry that drives it is about the size of a phone book and consumes less power than a 100w light bulb.

‘Their small size means we can afford to launch lots of satellites, and provide you lots of timely, sub-meter imagery and video, along with powerful derived analytics,’ the group said on their website.

SkySat-2, an identical version of SkySat-1, is scheduled to launch in early 2014.

It competitor, Vancouver-based UrtheCast, is also planning to mount both a still and video camera onto the International Space Station to provide a similar service.