The images below, created by a radar satellite built and operated by a private company, are a taste of a future in which anyone can purchase the ability to monitor changes on Earth from space.
ICEYE, a company in Finland, shared these exclusive radar images with Quartz to demonstrate the capabilities of a satellite it launched into an orbit 500 kilometers above the planet in January.
In the two animations, you can see how agricultural fields outside of Havana, Cuba, reshaped between January and February 2018, reflecting changes in irrigation and harvests:
It’s not an accident that ICEYE shared imagery of Cuba, where the agricultural sector is opaque and under stress. “When you have a satellite, you want to demonstrate that you can take pictures of places you wouldn’t otherwise image,” Pekka Laurila, the company’s co-founder, said.