The first-ever image of the earth captured by a satellite was in 1957. It took 40 minutes to download and the image of the north-central Pacific Ocean is more akin to a Rorschach test than an oceanic perspective, but it was significant and it was a start. Sixty years later with close to 6,000 satellites orbiting the earth at any one time, it’s now said that the American military has the ability to take satellite images with such precision that the insignia of an individual soldier can be identified.  Traditionally space has been the domain of large institutions like Nasa,…

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