Satellite tiles have some errors
- Dominant language
- TypeScript
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Description
mapbox-gl-js version: Latest
Browser: All modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
Steps to Trigger Behavior
1. Load a map with style mapbox://styles/mapbox/satellite-v9.
2. Zoom in to various regions (e.g., parts of China or mountainous areas).
3. Observe the rendering of the satellite tiles at mid to high zoom levels.
Demo image, you can view it from my attachment

Expected Behavior
Satellite tiles should render clearly and consistently across zoom levels, without large obstructions or incomplete imagery.
Actual Behavior
• Satellite imagery contains significant cloud cover, particularly persistent across some areas.
• Many tiles are partially missing or display mosaic-like block artifacts or long strips of empty or corrupted-looking content.
• These issues result in a poor user experience for applications requiring clean, high-resolution satellite data (e.g., map visualizations, education, or video creation).
It would be helpful to understand:
• Whether these are known issues due to the satellite data provider?
• If there are cleaner alternative tile sources (even at lower update frequency)?
• Whether a tile refresh is planned?
Thanks for your support!
Contributor guide
Research direction
No source file or test is named. Start by reproducing the issue with the mapbox://styles/mapbox/satellite-v9 style at mid to high zoom in the reported regions, then determine whether the artifacts come from mapbox-gl-js or the satellite data provider. Done requires a confirmed, reproducible defect with a scoped fix path.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- typescript
- Domain
- frontend, web-dev
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 20/100