content: Everything there is to know about imaging satellites I did some research on satellites. Summary from all the links There are hundreds of imaging satellites. Lenses and cameras on modern satellites are the highest of high-end (400+ Megapixels, up to a Gigapixel). Some have multiple cameras for regular images, radar, temperature, etc. A satellite can take high resolution images of an area it is passing over (as long as there are no clouds, otherwise only spatial radar images can be made of the surface, so for example you could see the shape of a car, but not what color it is). A satellite can pass the same spot multiple times per day, over a dozen times or more, depending on its velocity. Satellites are 'stuck' on their path in orbit, only able to change the angle of their cameras, sensors and solar panels (except maybe some military ones? apparently the military X-37 orbital vehicle can change it's path in orbit). There is a fleet of satellites travelling in kind of a grid to observe most of earth at any given time (but keep in mind: a higher resolution image means less coverage and also the angle limits what can be observed). Individual satellites are operated by various private and governmental entities of different nations. Hundreds of terrabits of data are constantly transmitted to ground stations (not just images, but weather data, spatial data, temperature, etc.). The best resolution of commercial satellites in the US is capped at 25cm, meaning 1 pixel in the image = 25cm -- anything higher than that is illegal and only allowed for intelligence/military, but that wouldn't stop a Chinese company from selling real-time 10cm resolution images... Youtube search for 'imaging satellite' brings up some good results: A weather satellite nerd Guy from a Satellite company explains a bit Relevant Wikipedia pages: Satellite Imagery Earth observation satellite Linked from Wikipedia: Satellite missions database Some articles I searched for 'cameras on a satellite', here are some of the best results, although there is still a lot of other good stuff. Maxar (a satellite manufacturer) Satellite Camera Resolution Explained - Comparison to Iphone Camera More on the cameras: Optical payloads for small satellites (you can actually buy these) Privacy concerns with commercial imaging satellites Imagery satellites - Some Pros and Cons Getting fresh public satellite images Some ways to get recent public satellite images, I'm sure there are more....  Zoom Earth: A Website to look at live satellite photos of earth's surface Some details: It combines near real-time images from multiple geostationary satellites, updated every 10 minutes (with a delay of ~30 minutes). NASA GOES satellite for the Americas, Japan's Himawari-8 for Asia and Meteosat in Europe/Africa. Zoomable up to 500m per pixel. Beyond that it uses historical imagery from Microsoft and Esri (so it's almost live when zoomed out, but when you zoom in the images are older). It also tracks the latest storms and hurricanes: https://zoom.earth/storms/ ESA Sentinel satellite imagery ~10m resolution updated roughly weekly. Usable via: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ Requires Linux to install, but is worth the effort: Felicette - CLI tool to get public satellite images of a location