COLORADO SPRINGS — Air Force Space Command leaders are working on plans to share data from satellites controlled by the military, bringing new opportunities that could allow firefighters to get images on their smartphones to help stamp out wildfires, and allow nonmilitary organizations to keep a better eye on the weather.
The civilian world is working on how infrared pictures could be used, with Colorado Springs software firm Braxton Technologies leading the pack. “It will be a game-changer,” said James Flemer, who is working on a Braxton infrared project.
Civilian environmental monitoring firms are already involved in gathering infrared imagery, but what the Air Force can bring is a constant, staring view from orbit.
The military uses information from the satellites to track missile launches. Many of the capabilities of the satellites to scan the Earth is still kept secret, The Colorado Springs Gazette reported.
Flemer said infrared images could spur technology leaps similar to the last time top-secret space technology was released. GPS, developed in the 1970s and first used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, was designed to give troops in the desert and bombers in flight an accurate fix on their positions. But the navigation and timing signals from space, accurate to a billionth of a second, are now used in more minivans than Humvees.
