#satellite-imagery

#satellite-imagery

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine was supposed to be a short campaign, but the larger country's swift victory anticipated by many analysts failed to materialize. Part of the reason for Ukraine's effective defense was Kyiv's early warning of the build-up of Russian forces on its border. U.S./allied intelligence warned Kyiv, but another non-government source tipped them off to the impending invasion: commercial imagery, especially Maxar's optical photos, publicly documented the build-up and the initial invasion, revealing the long convoy heading toward Kyiv on Feb. 27, 2022.

"Prior to my research, fewer than a dozen such traps were known across the entire pre-Hispanic Andes," Adrián Oyaneder, author of the research paper and an archaeologist at the University of Exeter in the UK, tells The Art Newspaper. "However, in parallel with a French research team, I was able to demonstrate that these structures are heavily concentrated in the Camarones Valley, where we documented 76 examples with strong indications of at least 100 more further to the south."

If you want the best view of Earth's landmarks, you'll need a ticket to space. Some of the world's most jaw-dropping sites - both natural and man-made - only reveal their true scale and beauty when captured from 250 miles overhead. The International Space Station has snapped images of some of these landmarks, such as the Great Barrier Reef, the Pyramids at Giza, and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Photos show how incredible landmarks look both from the ground and from way, way above.

But in Alaska, a new island has popped up in just four decades. The two-square-mile (five sq km) landmass, known as Prow Knob, was once entirely surrounded by the deep ice of the Alsek Glacier. But NASA has revealed that the small mountain has now been entirely surrounded by water, cutting it off from the mainland. An image taken by the Landsat 8 satellite in August shows that the mountain has now lost all contact with the Alsek Glacier.

"Originally, you'd have a person look at pictures. And that only scales so far," Nathaniel Manning, co-founder and CEO of LGND, explained regarding traditional data analysis.