The History of Satellite Remote Sensing

The origins of Earth observation date back to the development of photography in the early 19th century. Since then, and thanks to significant technology developments often pushed by military needs, our capability to observe the Earth from low Earth orbit and geostationary satellites has continuously improved with better spatial, radiometric, and spectral resolutions, and shorter revisit times. This chapter revises the origins and history of Earth observation from space platforms and illustrates the technology breakthroughs that have made it possible as we know it today.