Telephoto lenses have a low field of vision. You’d want very high resolution wide angle sensors. Or maybe a combination of the two, where the wide angle cameras spot interesting things for the narrow angle ones to look closer at.
The difference between the two would be like when they went from U2 spy planes to satellite imagery, going from thin strips of visibility to “here’s the hemisphere containing most of Russia”.
The trick being that wide angle and high resolution means very high expense, and probably a lot of power and ruggedness tradeoffs. For a satellite that’s fine, for this application I kind of think a cluster of narrow-view cameras would be way cheaper and more practical.
Telephoto lenses have a low field of vision. You’d want very high resolution wide angle sensors. Or maybe a combination of the two, where the wide angle cameras spot interesting things for the narrow angle ones to look closer at.
The difference between the two would be like when they went from U2 spy planes to satellite imagery, going from thin strips of visibility to “here’s the hemisphere containing most of Russia”.
The trick being that wide angle and high resolution means very high expense, and probably a lot of power and ruggedness tradeoffs. For a satellite that’s fine, for this application I kind of think a cluster of narrow-view cameras would be way cheaper and more practical.