I do not have the funds to buy satellite images from companies like PlanetLabs. I want to get images for my project on urban planning. So I need frequent images of a particular city. If I get a ground station working, is it possible to download images from multiple satellites? Before I start this work how can I find a list of those satellites which pass over my target city with the right sensors equipped?
Ideally, I would have liked to get the images from CubeSats of Planet which passes every 90 minutes.
Can I accomplish this with satNOGs?
Satellites that can capture imagery with the kind of resolution you would require are regulated, and will have proprietary / encrypted downlinks.
The only satellites which have open downlinks, that systems like SatNOGS (or otherwise) can receive, are generally weather satellites (NOAA, Meteor, GOES, etc…). These will not have the resolution you require.
You can’t fit the instruments to take this kind of imagery and the equipment to transmit it at the required bandwidth in a cubesat.
You should checkout the ESA Copernicus program (the sentinels). Their products are free to use and come at resolutions suitable for urban planning. Each spot on earth is imaged every 7 days. As far as I know this is as real time as you can get with those resolutions on civil satellites.
So yes, PlanetLabs do get their imagery using cubesats… however their downlinks are definitely not public, and are likely encrypted. If you feel like going and asking them if you can have free access to their downlinks, go right ahead.
The only ‘research’ cubesats that we know of with cameras (the likes of Lilacsat-1, PSAT-2, amongst others) all are of pretty low resolution, and not suited for your purposes. More suited for getting pretty pictures of earth curvature and/or lens distortion.
