How To Get (almost) LIVE Free Satellite Imagery On Your Phone
Satellite imagery is useful for OSINT investigations. However, the imagery present in Google Earth or ArcGIS Earth can often be outdated and not recent. While I have not yet found a way to get livestreamed satellite imagery for free and not connected to the NSA, this is the best free alternative I have found for now. The Copernicus browser access here offers free satellite imagery of places daily and is high-resolution enough to see cars and maybe even human figures.
Access it by going to this link and clicking Anonymous Login. Then use the search bar to choose your location. Here we are going to use NRG Stadium. Now, the sidebar is really important. Here you can filter the days that the satellite imagery was taken, and most importantly, filter out cloud coverage. If there was high cloud coverage, the satellite view will just be clouds and not the object you are trying to see. Click the MM/DD icon and it will show the days with 30% or less cloud cover in blue. As of the time of writing, that day for NRG Stadium is January 20th, 2026.
Click the blue box and it will present you with the types of views you want. I am most interested in seeing true color, most like Google Earth, so choose the first option or “Highlight Optimized Natural Color.” Then click Enter on the search box again and the location should show up. Unfortunately, for our view, 30% cloud cover is too much, so drag the slider backwards and select another date.
This is January 12th, 2025, and you can clearly see the stadium and the lack of cars, but anything else is pixelated.
Unfortunately, this means no person identification yet, but if you are collecting OSINT on, say, a protest, a ship, or tracking cars in a dealership, this can still be useful. It does appear that residential areas are more pixelated, though, so this may not be the best option for surveillance. However, access to near real-time satellite pictures is certainly interesting.
God Bless and Tech Talk To You Later!!
