The Future of Aerial Mapmaking: Cheap Helium Balloons

Most of the aerial imagery you’ve looked at, probably on Google Maps, is shot from high-altitude airplanes that are able to capture images of earth where one square pixel represents about one square foot of land. This resolution is better than what you’d get from a satellite, where a pixel covers maybe a square meter. From a satellite, you can make out a vehicle on the road. From a high-altitude airplane, you can tell if it’s a car or a truck.

Neither option, though, can really bring you down to the intimate view of children playing in a park fountain or hot-dog vendors on a sidewalk. Some DIY aerial mapmakers have toyed with collecting this level of data from remote-controlled airplanes.