Eyes in the sky keep track of a lot of things

Intelligence agencies may be struggling to unravel the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but scientist Jeff Olsenholler says you could take a satellite look for yourself at Afghanistan, with technology open to anyone on the Internet. Should that information be so openly available?He says there was talk about “shuttering” satellites in times of crisis. Olsenholler says sometimes aerial data can be used to our benefit, even by our enemies. During the Cuban missile crisis, Russians flew over the U-S and didn’t like what they saw. Olsenholler says it still depends on interpreting what the satellites see, but U-S observers lead the world not only in gathering, but interpreting the satellite pictures.He says we’re developing ways to “see within the shadows” and our scientists are the best. But it’s also lucrative to sell the data gathered by orbiting satellites for agricultural, mining, city-planning and mapping purposes. Olsenholler works at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where midwestern geologists are using satellites for a project dubbed “GLIMS,” for Global Land Ice Monitoring from Space.We look at Afghanistan and Pakistan to monitor glaciers and map the height of mountains and the movement of glaciers atop them. Anybody with a computer can sample some satellite images of the earth, though for top-quality details, clients will pay a lot.Sample sites: www.globexplorer.com, or (no W’s) http://edc.usgs.gov/