The Contribution of Space Technologies to Arctic Policy Priorities

GeoEye-1 Facts in Brief

Country: United States Operations: GeoEye

Status: Operational, launched in 2008 Mission Duration: Design life of 7 years Coverage: Global coverage, with a revisit time of 3 days or less Orbit: Sun synchronous orbit at 681 km altitude Key Service Areas: Geology, oil and mineral exploration, forest resource management, water resource management, environmental monitoring, air and marine transportation, defense and intelligence. Web link: http://launch.geoeye.com/LaunchSite/about/ GeoEye-1 is intended to meet the needs of organizations demanding the highest image resolution available commercially. It also addresses the need for exceptional geolocation accuracy, and customers can map natural and man-made features to better than 5 meters of their actual location on the surface of the Earth without ground control points. GeoEye-1 has the highest resolution of any commercial imaging system and can provide data with a ground resolution of 0.5 m in the panchromatic or black and white mode and 1.65 m in the multispectral or color mode. GeoEye-1’s camera is able to rotate or swivel forward, backward or side-to-side with high precision, enabling it to collect much more imagery during a single pass. The camera allows for side-to-side extensions of the camera’s 15.2 kilometer (9.44 miles)-wide swath width or multiple images of the same target during a single pass to create a stereo image. GeoEye also operates the Ikonos satellite launched in 1999 at the same altitude as GeoEye-1, with a revisit rate of 3-5 days off-nadir and 144 days for true-nadir. Ikonos was the first to collect publicly available high-resolution imagery at 1 m (panchromatic) and 4 m (multispectral) resolution. GeoEye-1 complements Ikonos and collects imagery about 40 percent faster for panchromatic and 25 percent faster for multispectral collections. Country: United States Operations: DigitalGlobe. Inc. Status: Launched in 2001 Mission Duration: Currently planned to end in 2014 Coverage: Global coverage, with repeat coverage of 2.5-5.6 days Orbit: Sun synchronous orbit at 450 km altitude Key Service Areas: Natural disaster management, humanitarian relief, geology, oil and mineral exploration, forest resource management, water resource management, defense and intelligence. Web link: http://www.digitalglobe.com/about-us/content-collection#satellites&quickbird QuickBird contributes to identifying the world’s natural resources, monitoring pipelines and facilities, understanding the earth’s environmental condition, protecting homelands and borders, responding to emergencies and natural disasters, and then rebuilding, and planning investments in multi-million dollar infrastructure developments. DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite offers sub-meter resolution imagery, high geolocational accuracy, and large 128 gigabits of on-board data storage. At nadir the panchromatic imagery has a resolution of 0.65 m and the multispectral imagery (blue, green, red and infrared) has a resolution of 2.6 m. QuickBird’s nominal swath width is 18 km at nadir, with an accessible ground swath of 564 km centered on the satellite ground track. A single area of interest is 18.0 km x 18.0 km, with a strip capability of 18.0 km x 360 km. Two types of imagery products are available: basic imagery (corrections for radiometric distortions and adjustments for internal sensor geometry, optical, and sensor distortions); and standard imagery (higher precision products in two forms – Basic Standard and Ortho Ready Standard). DigitalGlobe also operates WorldView-1 (high-capacity, panchromatic imaging satellite launched in 2007 and operating at an altitude of 496 kilometers with an average revisit time of 1.7 days, which features 0.5 m resolution imagery and collects in-track stereo imagery), and WorldView-2 (high-resolution 8-band multispectral satellite launched in 2009 and operating at an altitude of 770 kilometers with an average revisit time of 1.1 days, which provides 46 cm panchromatic resolution and 1.85 meter multispectral resolution imagery). Panchromatic and multispectral images (simultaneously) GeoEye-1 (and Ikonos) contributes to environmental, sovereignty and security and economic development policy priorities in the Arctic. The availability of high resolution imagery at relatively short repeat cycles provides beneficial data for environmental monitoring on land and ocean, exploration for valuable mineral and oil resources in the region and support of any necessary emergency response or sovereignty protection needs.

Mission Objectives

System Capabilities

Measured Parameters

Relevance to Arctic Interests

QuickBird Facts in Brief

Mission Objectives

System Capabilities

Panchromatic and multispectral images (simultaneously)

Measured Parameters

QuickBird (and WorldView -1 and -2) contributes to environmental, sovereignty and security and economic development policy priorities in the Arctic. The availability of high resolution imagery at relatively short repeat cycles provides beneficial data for environmental monitoring on land and ocean, exploration for valuable mineral and oil resources in the region and support of any necessary emergency response or sovereignty protection needs.

Relevance to Arctic Interests

93 C. INVENTORY OF SPACE SYSTEMS