China’s Academy of Sciences in Beijing creates the most powerful spy camera that can see faces from space

China's Tiangong Space Station Scientists in Beijing have created 'the world's most powerful spy camera' which can pick out facial details from distances exceeding 63 miles (100km). It means the spy camera could potentially be floating in space aboard a satellite while clearly seeing faces on Earth's surface. Pictured is China's Tiangong Space Station

Important Takeaways:

  • Scientists in Beijing have created ‘the world’s most powerful spy camera’ which can pick out facial details from distances exceeding 63 miles (100km).
  • It means the spy camera could potentially be in space aboard a floating satellite while clearly seeing faces of people on Earth’s surface.
  • It could also take high-resolution images of foreign military satellites operated by other nations that are also orbiting Earth, the South China Morning Post reported.
  • The technology, detailed by the scientists in a new paper, could be launched aboard a satellite in the near future.
  • Robert Morton, author and member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), called it a ‘massive security concern’.
  • ‘Millimeter resolution from 60+ miles up? That’s next-level surveillance,’ he said in a post on X (Twitter).
  • The spy camera has been newly developed by China’s Academy of Sciences’ Aerospace Information Research Institute in Beijing.
  • It uses a system called synthetic aperture lidar (SAL), a remote sensing technology that sends out a pulse of light energy and then records the amount of that energy reflected back.
  • Capable of operating day and night, SAL creates 2D and 3D reconstructions of surfaces of the Earth in various weather conditions.
  • Because it relies on optical waves, it’s capable of creating imagery with much finer resolution and better detail – described as a ‘quantum leap’.
  • The experts conducted a successful test across Qinghai Lake in China’s northwest, with the SAL device on one side and the target 63.2 miles (101.8km) away.

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