
Grab your own images from NOAA weather satellites - profquail
http://hackaday.com/2011/10/20/grab-your-own-images-from-noaa-weather-satellites/
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xbryanx
You can also grab near real-time imagery from the MODIS family of instruments.

[http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/cgi-
bin/imagery/realtime....](http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/cgi-
bin/imagery/realtime.cgi) <http://lance.nasa.gov/imagery/rapid-response/>

This is very useful when you want to zoom in on an interesting natural
disaster (fires, flooding, hurricanes, dust storms).

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mturmon
And even faster than this, MODIS is continuously broadcasting its raw data for
pickup by anyone below who is listening:

<http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/directbrod/index.php>

This "direct broadcast" is in addition to the arranged, higher-bandwidth,
downlinks of science data that feed the near-real-time pipeline (mentioned
above, a couple hours behind realtime) and the regular science data pipeline
(archival science data, days behind realtime).

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bediger
This has more clout than you notice at first. For starters, it illustrates
that satellites are really up there. I know, only the insane are Flat Earthers
any more, but still, it's hard to imagine "from orbit". This kind of thing
puts "in orbit" into the hands of everyone.

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pavel_lishin
It's a more advanced version of tuning your radio into Sputnik's broadcast
during the cold war. Except without the paranoia and fear.

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rwmj
We used to do this at school in the '80s using a BBC Micro and some hardware
that you could purchase. It's good to see that it can still be done -- they
haven't encrypted the downlinks.

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adestefan
Why would they? It would just be a lot of hassle and money for something that
is released for free anyway. You can get the same images off of NOAA's web
site.

I hope that the control link is authenticated and encrypted in someway.

~~~
ramidarigaz
I work in the scientific satellite industry, and as far as I know, _nothing_
is encrypted (possibly not true for military satellites). Sounds crazy, but I
think people are more worried about reliability than security. Pretty much an
accident waiting to happen.

Edit: It's more of a security through obscurity setup. The command codes
aren't published (plus, they're protected under ITAR), and probably vary quite
a bit per satellite. I think they are just hoping nobody takes the time to
figure out what bits to send.

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adoyle
EarthNow provides a live-looking (it's delayed) stream from Landsat 7. US/N.
America only, uses Java. <http://earthnow.usgs.gov/earthnow_app.html>

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codezero
Besides the other links in the comments, you can grab lots of NOAA data here:
<http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/>

Of course this isn't as fun as building your own receiver.

