Previously, the sharpest (commercial) eye on Earth was the GeoEye-1 satellite, which has a resolution of 41 centimeters and belongs to a Colorado-based company called DigitalGlobe. (Some militaries have satellites at a resolution of 15 to 20 centimeters, the BBC reports.) For the past 14 years, U.S. regulation kept companies such as DigitalGlobe from selling images with resolutions finer than 50 centimeters to anybody but the military. However, DigitalGlobe asked for permission to sell sub-50-centimeter-resolution images in 2013, Space News reports, and has received the go-ahead from the U.S. Commerce Department to begin selling 31-centimeter-resolution images six months from now.