How Satellite Imagery Magnified Ukraine to the World

There’s a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. But in 2022, much of the imagery that’s captured by commercial satellites flying over Ukraine has rendered the world speechless.

Even longtime industry veterans like Stephen Wood, an imagery analyst who’s spent the last 22 years with Maxar is awestruck — and often horrified — by what he’s seeing. Wood is currently senior director of the Maxar News Bureau, which provides satellite imagery and analytics to news organizations to inform news coverage.

“We have been doing this since the beginning of the launch of our satellites, from September 11 with the first overhead images of the World Trade Center towers to the conflicts in the Middle East, to the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami,” he tells Via Satellite. “The war in Ukraine has brought satellite imagery, in particular the data we’ve been providing, to the forefront in a way it hasn’t been used before. I’d even say that this war is probably the most documented war in history. I’ve been looking at a lot of these types of conflicts for many, many years, and I’ve never seen the avalanche of data we have today.”

Wood is not alone in his view that the role of high-resolution commercial satellite imagery in the Ukraine conflict is unprecedented.

While the broader role of the satellite industry as a stakeholder in the Ukraine conflict with Russia is one of 2022’s biggest storylines — between the hack on Viasat’s KA-SAT ground network in Ukraine, the emergency deployment of SpaceX’s Starlink terminals to high-conflict areas like Kyiv and OneWeb’s scrapped satellite launches — it’s the actual images captured by commercial satellites that are influencing perceptions and outcomes, and enhancing collaboration between companies like Maxar and BlackSky with the U.S. and its NATO allies.

Thanks to high-resolution satellite imagery, Ukraine is equipped with the data and tactical insights it needs to hold its own in the ongoing conflict with Russia, a country several times its size with twice as many troops — and an air force that’s five times as strong.

“Russia has a long history of having military and reconnaissance satellites, Ukraine has one civil Earth observation satellite, and yet they’re keeping pace with Russia in terms of their capabilities to have surveillance and intelligence,” says Mariel Borowitz, associate professor of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a consultant who has worked for the Space Foundation, NATO and others, and recently authored an article on the growing importance of satellites in the Ukraine conflict.

As retiring National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Director Robert Sharp noted at the USGIF GEOINT Symposium in April, that until recently, publicly available imagery of Ukraine “would’ve been only available through government agencies and officials.” Today, he said, “it’s helping a democratic country fight for its survival and preserve its independence.”

But while vivid satellite imagery has awakened millions to the day-to-day realities of conflict, it’s also spotlighted the limitations of technology, as well as the sensitivities around information sharing. In turn, there is an uptick in competition between industry veterans and startups in the high-resolution satellite imagery marketplace.

Empowering Ukraine with Actionable Insights

The use of unclassified commercial satellite imagery by governments has come a long way over the last 20 years, and today, commercial remote sensing satellites can capture images with 30 centimeters resolution.

“That’s extremely good detail,” says Wood. “You’re able to pick out very small features that are important for reconnaissance, surveillance, and for monitoring things that are happening in a conflict.”

Having a high level of clarity during combat allows decision makers to track the movement of materials on the ground, air, and sea, from tanks to grain shipments.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, for example, can see through cloud cover and darkness. This is particularly useful to show the movement of people and tanks and materials, Borowitz says.

“The government looks at missiles being moved. There are also companies that are looking at radio frequency information, they detect things like GPS jamming, that’s another indicator you can look at in real time. Having those different types of data can give you that awareness.”

Because radar imaging technology enables the Earth to be watchable 24/7, SAR satellites, along with electro-optical remote sensing satellites, “are like body cameras for our planet,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO of Iceye, a Finnish SAR company that operates its own fleet of satellites. Iceye recently donated one of its satellites to the government of Ukraine, through a partnership with the Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation.

“Because radar satellites can ‘see’ at night and ‘see’ the ground through clouds, we firmly believe SAR technology and its capabilities will add significant value to the government of Ukraine,” Modrzewski says.

And because commercial capacity has increased so much, amid global tensions, the Earth observation market is booming and the demand is evolving towards sharper resolutions and higher revisit rates, says Alexis Conte, senior consultant and editor in chief of Euroconsult's Earth Observation Data and Service Market Intelligence report.

“The race is on [and] incumbent satellite operators Maxar and Airbus are deploying satellites with 30-centimeter resolution, processing into 15 [centimeters],” he said.

Additionally, he noted, new startups such as Albedo are aiming to raise the bar even higher. The U.S.-based company recently completed a $48 million Series A financing round, which the company plans to use to build very-Low-Earth-Orbit (VLEO) satellites that will co-collect 10 centimeter optical imagery and 2-meter thermal infrared imagery, according to a news release.

“Things are changing a lot,” Conte says, adding that the aim is to find the sweet spot between reducing satellite costs and improving performances. “You can better identify a target at 30 centimeters, compared to 70 [centimeter], for instance. More revisit up to every hour enables you to better track changes and refine behaviors.”

Framing the Narrative

The impact of such satellite imagery is also being felt far away from Ukrainian soil.

“From the public perspective, I don’t think people realize that data existed to that extent that they could get those images with that quality that frequently,” said Borowitz. “I think people thought, ‘There’s spy satellites out there somewhere’ but the idea that ‘I can see this on a regular basis’ was a relatively new thing for a lot of people to experience.”

One of those banner moments early on in the war occurred shortly after February 24, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine, recalls Maxar’s Wood.

“For days after the Russians invaded, our imagery played an important role in watching the infamous 40-mile convoy as the Russians were approaching Kyiv,” says Wood. “Our imagery, because it covered such a large area and with that kind of high quality, we were able to get relevant imagery information out to our customers as well as to the media and the public, to visually convey the scope and the magnitude and the makeup of the convoy,” says Wood. “You can imagine from a government and military perspective how useful that would be to get an assessment where it’s not just a pinprick looking at a small area of coverage. We’re able to see hundreds and hundreds of square kilometers with our satellite images and [are] able to identify a tank, a self-propelled artillery gun, airborne forces, so many things like that that were critical during the assessment of the war.”

Having a time-stamped visual offers compelling evidence, says Wood, noting that because Maxar’s data is unclassified and can be shared, it can help combat campaigns of disinformation.

“Probably the most notable example was the atrocities that the Russians committed around Bucha,” says Wood. “As the Russians were occupying that part of Kyiv and then withdrew, videos began to appear on social media showing Ukrainian people who were killed, lying in the streets of that suburb. The Russians came out to say, ‘It’s all a bunch of disinformation, these are staged Ukrainian actors.’ We were able to use our satellite data to verify the date and time and location of these bodies appearing in the streets and compare the imagery to the videos on social media and corroborate that it was indeed authentic.”

Maxar’s imagery underpinned reporting by The New York Times and BBC about the massacre in Bucha, refuting Russia’s claims.

Having accurate information is also effective in galvanizing world citizens, governments, and private organizations to act quickly.

“One visual I keep in my memory are the incidents that happened in Mariupol, when there were hundreds of civilians who took shelter in a theater in the middle of the city,” says Wood. “We could see on our satellite imagery the word ‘children’ written in Russian outside the theater, as a sign from the Ukrainians saying don’t hit it, there are children in here. A couple of days later, the Russians hit that shelter with some precision airstrikes. Ultimately, hundreds of people reportedly died in that theater. To be able to see across the whole city — which reminded us of historical photos of Stalingrad or Dresden during World War II — and to be able to publicly share the current satellite imagery played an important role in peoples’ awareness of what was happening.”

“I believe commercial imagery has played an important role in the awareness that people have of current events around the world,” he adds. “It doesn’t have to be a war. This week, Hurricane Ian, last week Puerto Rico, and other weeks, wildfires and crises around the world.”

However, not all commercial satellite providers agree that providing the public access to sensitive images in Ukraine such an approach is beneficial outside of the area of combat. Iceye’s Modrzewski tells Via Satellite that Iceye is one of the few companies that shares imagery privately with its customers and partners, but not publicly with the media in this specific case.

“Prior to the war in Ukraine, Iceye had a long-standing policy of not releasing imagery of conflict zones or politically sensitive areas to media outlets. This is a policy we've maintained throughout the war between Ukraine and Russia,” Modrzewski says. "It is relevant to note that operational security for the Ukrainian defense is a possible concern in relation to data being revealed publicly, as that data may be sensitive and potentially misused."

Seeing Beyond Conflict

As remarkable as progress has been, the mantra of “more, better, faster,” is a constant reminder that the satellite industry has a long way to go to achieve the goals that its customers are eyeing.

Improvements in automation and processing, and interoperability will help to facilitate smoother, faster, communications – ensuring the right information travels as close as real-time as possible to the right decision makers. That could be military generals, and it could also be first responders in the wake of a hurricane or a tsunami.

However, a higher volume of information poses challenges in terms of processing for delivering actionable intelligence, Conte noted in a recent report.

“There are a lot of capabilities in imagery but the huge issues can’t be solved by any single human being,” says Conte. “You need layers of services to extract the relevant information for you. To get the correct identification of objects, you have to automate the imagery processing. The demand is evolving toward up-to-date virtual reality in a 3D environment … of what’s going down on the field right now, so that gives you a tactical advantage.”

Still, because commercial satellite imagery has proven so effective in influencing outcomes, Borowitz expects the demand for remote sensing and government support of the sector will soar in new ways.

“It’s clear now that data is useful on an operational and tactical level. From the U.S. perspective, the strategic value of having a commercial remote sensing sector is clear,” she says. “Whereas before, people would have said, ‘I hope they can be economically successful.’ I don't think the government will care about that as much anymore.It may be worthwhile for the government to invest more to ensure that [commercial remote sensing industry] is successful.”

Wood says that many of the current challenges will be resolved with the next generation of very-high-resolution satellites, combined with continued advancements in data delivery and analysis.

“We’re [hoping] to turn that imagery into 3D to make it useful to people for all kinds of new applications and capabilities,” says Wood. “It’s not just defense. It can be climate-related, environmental issues and civil government types of application. The capabilities we’re designing serve multiple customer sets.” VS