mingcha·toolbox｜what does the world look like at this moment? real-time satellite imagery can provide a glimpse
2024-10-05
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tool
there is an international cargo airport in khostomer, 10 kilometers outside kiev, ukraine. during the soviet period, it was a flight test and improvement base for the secret research and development unit of the antonov design bureau. after the collapse of the soviet union, antonov converted it into a civilian aircraft. developed and manufactured by the company and later declassified for general use. due to its proximity to the capital kiev, the strategic significance of khostomeyr airport to ukraine is self-evident. in addition, an equipment transport aircraft developed in the 1980s in response to the soviet space program was parked here. it is also the only largest aircraft in the world - the an-225 "dream" transport aircraft.
on the evening of february 24, 2022, beijing time, the russian armed forces launched a surprise attack on hostomel airport. ukraine quickly fought back, and a battle for the airport quickly began.
during the battle, hostomel airport changed hands several times, and the fighting was fierce. there are rumors on social platforms that the an-225 "dream" transport aircraft, the world's largest aircraft parked at the antonov airport in khostomeir, has been destroyed. in order to verify this statement, images related to the "dream" transport aircraft became necessary. but in the tense conditions of that cold winter day, it was nearly impossible to confirm the plane's condition with the naked eye or a camera. the commonly used street view images are also updated regularly and cannot provide real-time images.
at the time of the stalemate, planet labs, a commercial satellite remote sensing data company from the united states, shared a set of pictures on the internet. the picture reveals that on february 22, 2022, the an-225 "dream" was parked in the open air at hostomel airport. by february 28, the aircraft had been transferred to the hangar. part of the tail of the "dream" cargo plane seemed to protrude from the hangar, but there were obvious traces of bombing on the ground near the hangar. with the help of pictures provided by planet labs, it can be reasonably speculated that the "dream" transport aircraft may have been attacked. close-up pictures and reports released by the media soon after also confirmed that the aircraft had been destroyed in the battle.
screenshot of the image shared by planet labs. the left half is an image taken on february 22, 2022, and the right half is taken on february 28, 2022.
in the russia-ukraine conflict, commercial satellite data service providers such as planet labs were able to provide real-time, first-hand and reliable data with flexible scheduling, clear imaging and high-altitude perspectives. as far as planet labs is concerned, it has more than 200 satellites in orbit. it has the highest intra-day revisit capability among commercial satellite service providers. it can monitor more than 350 million square kilometers of terrain every day and provide a resolution of 50 high definition satellite imagery of centimeters.
maxar, another american commercial satellite service provider, has almost become the "royal camera" of the global media in reporting on the russia-ukraine conflict because it owns worldview-3, one of the highest-resolution commercial remote sensing satellites in orbit in the world. worldview-3 has a resolution of up to 30 centimeters and can distinguish cars, suvs, motorcycles and trucks. if used for military purposes, it can distinguish military equipment such as tanks and armored vehicles. in the first half of this year, maxar launched and launched two satellites as part of its newly developed constellation of high-resolution earth imaging satellites, worldview legion. once the constellation is deployed, maxar will be able to provide more 30-centimeter resolution images and up to 15 global revisit opportunities per day.
the satellite images provided by maxar can reach a resolution of 15 centimeters after processing.
in recent years, commercial or civilian satellites have also been able to deeply intervene in conflicts due to their dual-use potential, providing intelligence, communication and other services to both parties in the conflict. in december 2022, then russian defense minister sergei shoigu stated that the united states and nato mobilized more than 500 satellites to provide various support to the ukrainian army, of which more than 70 were military satellites and the rest were dual-use satellites. these satellites transmit intelligence to the ukrainian army on the front line in a timely manner, and can also monitor the logistics support, supplies, and troop recruitment in the russian mainland areas behind. in addition to maxar and planet labs, remote sensing satellite companies such as the united states' blacksky company, capella space company, france's airbus defense and space company, and finland's iceeye company all use their high-resolution optical and synthetic aperture radar (sar) satellites captured a large number of high-value satellite images on the russian-ukrainian battlefield. due to the deep involvement of commercial satellites, the russia-ukraine conflict is also considered by the industry to be a "war transformed by commercial satellites."
for fact-checkers, commercial satellites are also one of the most reliable sources of information when verifying emergencies such as conflicts. the third-party perspective provided by satellites makes this type of image data more credible than other data. when we urgently need to understand the true progress of an emergency, we can rely on real-time images provided by commercial satellites to conduct preliminary verification of the event.
nonetheless, most commercial satellite services are paid and come with a hefty price tag. if your requirements for image quality are not high, or you need to monitor multiple large areas, you can use sentinel hub's eo browser. this is a web-based tool that allows us direct access to a collection of free satellite images of low to medium resolution collected by the european space agency's copernicus programme. eo browser also provides a variety of analysis and visualization tools, and supports downloading full-resolution photos in multiple formats (jpeg, kmz, geotiff).
EO Broswer。
here, we will combine the case of the russia-ukraine conflict to demonstrate how to use eo browser to obtain real-time satellite images.
case
in march 2022, a video was widely circulated on chinese and foreign social platforms. a driver witnessed a violent explosion in his car. the scene was filled with flames and the night seemed like day.
screenshot of net legend method.
some netizens said that this was a "giant fuel-air bomb" dropped by the russian army in cherkasy oblast, ukraine. it was russia's "father of bombs" and its power was second only to nuclear weapons.
in order to verify the authenticity of this video, the paper mingcha located the location of the explosion where the video was shot. according to the description of netizens, the explosion recorded in the video occurred in cherkasy oblast, ukraine. some military enthusiasts believe that an explosion of this scale is most likely to show the scene after a weapons depot in a certain place was bombed. open source intelligence (osint) enthusiast @john_marquee followed this idea and first searched for the weapons depot in cherkasy oblast, ukraine on wikimapia - it showed a total of 6; then he used google earth images to check each one one by one. the geographical environment around the weapons depot finally locked the location where the video may have been recorded - around 30.1018 east longitude and 48.7421 north latitude.
wikimapia search records show that there are 6 weapons depots in the cherkasy region of ukraine.
@john_marquee locked the location where the video may have been recorded at 30.1018 east longitude and 48.7421 north latitude. comparing the original video screen (left) with the 3d street view image of google earth (right), it can be found that the intersections and curves shown in the video are the surrounding trees and long poles standing on the bends are consistent with the geographical information elements in the street scene. image source: @john_marquee
comparing these geographical coordinates with the locations of the six weapons depots in cherkasy oblast, ukraine, marked on wikimapia, it can be found that the location where the video was filmed matches one of the locations named "central artillery depot no. 222" (222nd central artillery ammunition base) is very close. according to the scale calculation, the straight-line distance between the two is about 3.63 kilometers.
as we all know, the propagation speed of sound is about 340 meters/second under standard atmospheric pressure and normal temperature conditions, and the propagation speed of sharp sounds in the air may be higher. around the 11th to 12th second of the online video, viewers can hear a muffled sound, which sounds like the sound of an object bombing. at the same time, in the video, the soaring flames appeared in about 1 to 3 seconds, and the time gap between the appearance of light and sound was about 10 seconds. therefore, if we roughly estimate based on the speed of sound multiplied by the propagation time, we can roughly infer that the location of the online video shooter is at least 3.4 kilometers away from the explosion site. this number is consistent with the video shooting location and "no. 222" shown on the flat map. the straight-line distance from the location of the "central artillery arsenal" is roughly consistent.
the location where the video was filmed is very close to the "no. 222 central artillery arsenal". using a scale, the straight-line distance between the two is about 3.63 kilometers.
after learning that the location of the explosion in the video may be the "central artillery depot no. 222" in the cherkasy region, we were able to verify this statement using real-time satellite imagery from sentinel hub.
open the satellite image software eo browser of sentinel hub, search for the geographical coordinates of "no. 222 central artillery arsenal", and adjust the time to the time when the online video appeared on the social platform, that is, before february 27, 2022, you can find that, the images captured by sentinel-2 l2a show that between february 21st and 26th, the surface near the "no. 222 central artillery weaponry" seems to have undergone obvious changes. the satellite image captured on the 26th appeared on the ground. there are more obvious dark marks.
the area near the "no. 222 central artillery weaponry" photographed by sentinel-2 l2a. the upper picture was taken on february 21, 2022, and the lower picture was taken on february 26, 2022.
we can use the "time-lapse" function in the satellite image software eo browser to make the satellite images from february 21 to february 26, 2022 into animations, so that the "no. 222 central artillery weapon" can be observed more clearly "library" landmark has changed during this period.
animated gif created using eo browser's "time-lapse" function.
it can be inferred from the changes in the images provided by eo broswer that if the explosion reported online is true, the incident should have occurred between february 21st and february 26th. search around keywords such as "cherkasy bombing" on the google search engine, and limit the publication time to february 21, 2022, to february 26, 2022. you can find that a ukrainian local media named segodnya posted on the 24th an article published on the same day mentioned that the cherkasy area was hit by artillery fire that day, and local people had to relocate on a large scale. on the same day, oleksandr skichko, the governor of ukraine's cherkasy region and a member of the ukrainian parliament, also posted a message on his personal facebook account, reminding local people to be vigilant that local military facilities in cherkasy are under attack.
ukrainian mp oleksandr skichko issued a warning message on february 24, 2022, drawing the public's attention that local military facilities in cherkasy were under attack.
using nasa's thermal anomaly satellite images to lock the time to february 28, 2022 to the previous week, it can finally be confirmed that on february 24, 2022 local time, which was the first day of the russian army's attack on ukraine, the a suspected explosion occurred near the "no. 222 central artillery weaponry" in alkaser prefecture.
thermal anomaly satellite images show that on february 24, 2022 local time, a suspected explosion occurred near the "central artillery weapon depot no. 222" in cherkasy oblast.
at this point, combined with wikimapia, google earth, eo broswer, nasa thermal anomaly satellite images, distance calculations, local media reports and the statement of the governor of cherkasy state on facebook, it can be basically confirmed that the bombing reflected in the video should actually exist . the shooting location of the original video is around 30.1018e and 48.7421n in central ukraine. the bombed location in the video is the "no. 222 central artillery weapon depot" in the western part of cherkasy oblast. the incident may occur in 2022 local time. in the early morning of february 24, the war between russia and ukraine had just begun. this can also explain why the car in the video was still driving on the roads in ukraine at night even though it was already in wartime.
through real-time satellite images, we can understand the situation where emergencies occur as soon as possible. however, it needs to be reminded that the application of real-time satellite images has limitations. for example, the quality of satellite images is affected by weather factors, and when clouds are thick, the scene on the ground may not be clearly visible. in addition, despite the high frequency of updates, commercial satellites are still unable to "point where to find", and we cannot yet expect these satellites to provide geographic information at any place at any time.
investigator zheng shujing
(this article is from the paper. for more original information, please download the “the paper” app)
