is there a geostationary satellite with telescope able to see car license plate on earth?

Answer 1

Extremely doubtful. The best resolution for US spy satellites has been guessed to be about 2 inches, which is much larger than the numbers on a license plate. Even if it could resolve that small, the viewing angle would make it difficult to see the plate.

Anyway, spy satellites circle the Earth at altitudes of about 150-200 miles, they aren't in geostationary orbit, which is around 22,000 miles. At that distance, they'd be lucky to distinguish large buildings.

Edit: A Guy, the GPS satellites are not in geostationary orbit. They orbit at around 12,000 miles, which is about half geostationary distance. The orbits are designed such that there are almost always 4 satellites in view from any point on the surface, since you need 4 for complete 3-D positioning.

Geostationary orbit is used mostly for communications satellites, and some large-area weather overview satellites. We do have some military satellites up there that watch for missile launches and any other large heat events, because they can be seen from that distance. At that height, they can cover a good chunk of a hemisphere.

Haysoos, stop being so paranoid. They can't read your paper.

Answer 2

There would be little use for a geostationary satellite that could do that. One in a non-stationary orbit that could take pictures all over the globe would be far more useful. Geostationary satellites are more useful for communications, since they can be easily found from the ground and used to bounce signals off of. Surveillance satellites are more useful when they're mobile.

As far as resolution, yes, there are satellites that could resolve a newspaper headline or even read the newspaper over your shoulder, however reading a car license plate is much, much harder. It's not a matter of resolving power, and magnification, it's a matter of angles.

Satellites, being in space, tend to be far up above whatever they are surveilling. License plates, being on the back bumpers of vehicles, tend to be facing the wrong direction to be read from space. Perhaps if a car was going down a steep hill, or falling off a cliff, the satellite could read the plates, but in the normal course of operations it would be very unlikely.

Answer 3

There is no spy satellite that can read a license plate from orbit!

Due to diffraction of light, there is a limit to the smallest detail that can be theoretically seen for any given size telescope. According to the a rule of thumb called Dawes Limit, the smallest resolvable detail, in arc seconds, is 4.56 divided by the width of the lens or mirror in inches. An arc second it 1/3,600 of a degree. You probably need to resolve detail smaller than one inch to actually read a license plate, but I'll do a calculation for resolving 1 inch from 200 miles away (low orbit, much closer than geostationary). 200 miles X 5280 feet X 12 inches is 12,672,000 inches. The angle whose tangent is 1/12,672,000 is 0.0162 arc seconds. Dawes limit says the lens must be 4.56/0.0162 = 281 inches (23 feet) wide. This assumes perfect optics and no atmospheric blurring. That is about 3 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Answer 4

No. Spy photos, and other high-resolution earth photograpy, are done exclusively by satellites in low orbit (less than 200 miles). Geostationary orbit is used only for communications satellites.

Answer 5

Dan K. has also given the reason why we can't "see" the leftover equipment from the Moon landings. It's not that they were hoaxes, it's that our current telescopes can't resolve to even close the required resolution to see this equipment.

PS: I believe that Geostat sats are used for GPS, as well as comms. Is that right?

Answer 6

The satellite images Google Earth uses can do that. The military is believed to have sattelites with far higher resolution.

Answer 7

With Google Earth it can only get so close and most of the time it's blurry when you get that close. Plus you'd have to be lucky to get your car into the picture.

Answer 8

im sure there is and its owned by the FBI most likely