A Message From Our CEO – New Satellites on the Horizon

Spot Image, based in Toulouse, France, has been in the commercial satellite imaging business for almost 20 years. For most of that time, they have been known for supplying medium resolution (2.5-m to 20-m) imagery; however, in 2010, that may all change. Spot Image’s Pleiades constellation, comprised of the Pleiades-1 and Pleiades-2 satellites, is set to bring you satellite imagery at a resolution of 50-cm and with a footprint of 20 km x 20 km. This footprint is about 25% larger than the footprint of any current high-resolution satellite. It is anticipated that Pleiades-1 will launch in Q4 2010 with Pleiades-2 to follow shortly in early 2011.

Here are the key specifications of the Pleiades constellation:

• Daily revisits to nearly any point on the globe
• 50-cm standard orthorectified products (however no ground control will be utilized)
• Highly configurable tasking services:
           - Urgent tasking: place order up to
             6 hours before image acquisition
           - Direct tasking options for receiving
             stations: place order less than 1 hour
             before image acquisition
• Imaging swath of 20-km at nadir
• Single-pass collection of mosaics with a footprint of 100 km x 100 km
• Near-real-time stereo and tri-stereo acquisition
• Daily coverage of 1 million sq km per satellite
• Exceptional image location accuracy: modeled at 3-m RMSE without ground control points
• Four 2-m spectral bands (blue, green, red and infrared) for better spectral analysis

According to Spot, because of their long established commercial operations, the new Pleiades constellation will not be hampered by tasking obligations to defense agencies and therefore offering unprecedented imaging capacity dedicated to a largely commercial market.

It seems that GeoEye’s GeoEye-1, DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 and now Spot Image’s Pleiades-1 & 2 just may be the “game changers” that we in the commercial world have long awaited. I’ll keep you posted.

David K. Nale
President/CEO
Certified Photogrammetrist
Certified Mapping Scientist
Professional Land Surveyor

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