Any satellites that carry sensors pointed at the earth are potentially spy satellites, and the commercial sats launched by various companies are regularly used by nation states to gather data. They are inherently dual use.
The kind of satellite referred to hear, SAR, is already aloft. Capella has SAR sats; they were recently acquired. Umbra has SAR. SAR's advantage is that it can read the surface of the earth despite cloud cover, which happens to be common in Ukraine. Its disadvantage is that the data takes a lot of processing to be legible to humans.
Germany is launching these sats in response to the Trump administration's decision to make it hard/expensive for Ukraine to access US commercial satellites' data. Like many such recent decisions, it was later overturned, but by that time, people decided they didn't want to depend on US budgets or technology companies.
vonnik•3h ago
The kind of satellite referred to hear, SAR, is already aloft. Capella has SAR sats; they were recently acquired. Umbra has SAR. SAR's advantage is that it can read the surface of the earth despite cloud cover, which happens to be common in Ukraine. Its disadvantage is that the data takes a lot of processing to be legible to humans.
Germany is launching these sats in response to the Trump administration's decision to make it hard/expensive for Ukraine to access US commercial satellites' data. Like many such recent decisions, it was later overturned, but by that time, people decided they didn't want to depend on US budgets or technology companies.
https://spacenews.com/u-s-restores-satellite-imagery-support...
So the loss is America's, ultimately.