Poor Microsoft They are outTrumped by Google once again in the Mapping stakes
And this as the Americans put it is a Doozie
Launching next week and its being streamed Live on the Web Details on several of these links as to the location of the Link
There is a New Mapping satellite going into orbit called GeoEye-1 and Google have Paid a lot of money to bring the Images to its Mapping service so what you see soon From it says October onwards will be Fairly fresh images and there is a 2nd satellite planned(GeoEye-2) Launch in 2011 which may be the same spec or slightly enhanced?
So Most of the the "cabbage field " Views will come into clear view within a Few Months
And I omitted 1 small detail till the End. And this Need a Maths Student/Graduate to tell us what it means in Plain English
Google are Going to show these images at just Shy of the Legal Maximum Limit
Which I interpret as even Closer than Microsofts 25 yard Resolution on the Birdseye....
Google Map in the "Clear area" can Zoom down to 10 ft Resolution Max and images are fuzzy but When this new resolution comes into use what will the clarity be like then? Will it be able to pick out things like Road sign shapes? TV aerials? Buoys in the Harbour? even the small type! All nearly invisible now .
Here are the basic Details of the satellite and the Maths are here as well

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The GeoEye-1 Satellite, designed and built by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, is the world's highest resolution commercial imaging satellite. Designed to take color images of the Earth from 423 miles (681 kilometers) in space and moving at a speed of about four-and-a-half miles (seven kilometers) per second, the satellite will make 15 earth orbits per day and collect imagery with its ITT-built imaging system that can distinguish objects on the Earth's surface as small as 0.41-meters (16 inches) in size in the panchromatic (black and white) mode. The 4,300-pound satellite will also be able to collect multispectral or color imagery at 1.65-meter ground resolution. While the satellite will be able to collect imagery at 0.41-meters, GeoEye's operating license from NOAA requires re-sampling the imagery to half-meter resolution for all customers not explicitly granted a waiver by the U.S. Government.
The satellite will be able to see an object the size of home plate on a baseball diamond but also map the location of an object that size to within about nine feet (three meters) of its true location on the surface of the Earth without need for ground control points. Together, GeoEye's IKONOS and GeoEye-1 satellites can collect almost one million square kilometers of imagery per day.
With the ability to revisit any location on the globe every three days, and at lesser resolution more frequently, GeoEye-1 will enable customers to receive imagery updates on a regular basis

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Quote:

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GeoEye's operating license from NOAA requires re-sampling the imagery to half-meter resolution for all customers not explicitly granted a waiver by the U.S. Government.

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several links...
http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/29/sky-rockets-in-flight-google-maps-delight/

Google to buy GeoEye satellite imagery

Google to Get New Satellite Imagery From GeoEye

Looking forward to seeing the results
Trivia:
They say this satellite alone will be Recording the Equivalent of the area of the State of Delaware in a Day!
So Maths people How many "Delawares" can you Fit on a Global area? And we'll have an estimate of how many Days GeoEye could "see"(In theory) the entire Planet before repeating the exercise