ITU From the earliest times, humans have dreamed of flying like birds — looking down from high above, to the ground below. Prehistoric civilizations are unlikely to have even imagined powered flight, or cameras that can record the world around us. Even 100 years ago, with flight and photography relatively common, the idea of “taking pictures” of the Earth from space was unheard of. How we view the Earth today with satellites Today, if you ask the average person about satellites looking at the Earth, the majority will tell you about spy satellites taking pictures of secret bases. While this is still done by dedicated satellites and was indeed the precursor of modern Earth-observation (EO) satellites, now scientists prefer to view the Earth with a much wider spectrum of radio colours, far beyond the senses of any living thing.