This talk considers the political and epistemic stakes of Earth observing satellites, which have been gazing down at the planet since the early 1960s. It asks of these perceptual technologies: What do these satellites observe, and how do practices and cultures of Earth observation differ? I offer examples of how satellite imagery has shifted from depicting the “full disc” of planet Earth to honing in on increasingly fine pixels. At the same time, in light of the rapid advances that governments and companies in several countries are making to satellites’ spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions, along with the integration of Earth observation data with social sensing, this talk argues that increasingly, more important than what satellites can see is what they can foresee, from the individual to the planetary scale. It then considers the consequences of satellite foresight and reflects upon whether we are really dealing with satellite imagery or satellite simulacra.

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