Main applications in the Earth observation - US commercial applications
From INVESaTWIKI
Main applications in the Earth observation - US commercial applications
When Space Imaging (now acquired by ORBIMAGE to form GeoEye) successfully launched the IKONOS satellite in 1999, it made history with the world’s first one-meter commercial remote sensing satellite. Since then, GeoEye has set the standard for quickly delivering large volumes of tonally balanced, map accurate, mosaicked images for a variety of industries and applications. [1]
Orbimage OrbView-1 was successfully launched on April 3, 1995 and is now a completed mission. The satellite provided daily severe weather images, global lightning information and atmospheric monitoring to improve long-term weather forecasts. OrbView-2 was successfully launched on August 1, 1997. OrbView-2 offers broad-area multispectral imagery of both land and ocean regions. The high-resolution satellite, OrbView-3 was successfully launched on June 26, 2003. OrbView-3 offers high-resolution one-meter panchromatic and four-meter multispectral imagery.
The future system planned is the hyperspectral OrbView-X. [2]
The QuickBird satellite is the first in a constellation of spacecraft that DigitalGlobe is developing that offers highly accurate, commercial high-resolution imagery of Earth. QuickBird's global collection of panchromatic and multispectral imagery is designed to support applications ranging from map publishing to land and asset management to insurance risk assessment. [3]
The next-generation satellite, WorldView, will be the
world’s highest resolution commercial imaging satellite
when launched in 2006. Ball Aerospace & Technologies
Corp. is building the satellite for DigitalGlobe, as part of a team for
the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). [4]
References
[1] http://www.geoeye.com/products/imagery/ikonos/default.htm
[2] http://www.orbimage.com/news/launch.html
