17/01/2012

A step closer to mapping the Earth in 3D

After a year in service, the German Earth observation satellite TanDEM-X, together with its twin satellite, TerraSAR-X, have completely mapped the entire land surface of Earth for the first time. The data is being used to create the world's first single-source, high-precision, 3D digital elevation model of Earth. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) controls both radar satellites, generates the elevation model and is responsible for the scientific use of TanDEM-X data.


Source: DLR

The TanDEM-X mission – running like clockwork

It is reminiscent of ballet on ice; throughout the last year, Germany's radar satellites, TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X, have been moving through space in close formation, at times just a few hundred metres apart. Strip by strip, they have recorded Earth from different angles and transmitted high-resolution radar data from their orbit at an altitude of 514 kilometres down to the three ground stations – Kiruna (Sweden), Inuvik (Canada) and O'Higgins (Antarctica). "The mission is running better than expected and there have been no unscheduled interruptions in the programmed formation flight of the two satellites. All safety mechanisms are functioning robustly and in a stable manner," enthuses Manfred Zink, project manager for the TanDEM-X ground segment at DLR. Over the course of 2011, the distance between the satellites was progressively reduced down to the minimum permitted value of 150 metres.

For more information, click here.

16/01/2012

Half price DMCii 2011 country image pack in New Year sale

Remote sensing solutions provider DMC International Imaging Ltd (DMCii) has today launched its New Year sale during which customers can purchase its high quality, ready-to-use country image packs half price.

DMCii imaging specialists have produced complete, high quality 22m multi-spectral satellite imagery of many countries in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas. The image packs are compiled using the best available imagery from 2011 resulting in exceptionally low cloud cover even in tropical regions. The 650km satellite swath ensures that very large areas are covered within consistent time windows and with an easily manageable number of image tiles, offering significant advantages to the end user.

Images are delivered in half-swath 320km by 300km tiles and ortho-rectified so that they are ready to process in a broad range of GIS systems. The multi-spectral data is radiometrically cross-calibrated to within 1% of Landsat core bands (Red, Green, NIR) and is commonly used for government surveys and scientific research for water management, agricultural planning, forest cover and land use mapping.

The New Year image pack sale begins today until the 29th of February 2012. For more details, click here.

06/01/2012

First Pleiades 1A imagery

Pléiades 1A returns its first images 3 days after being placed in orbit by a Soyuz launch vehicle on December 17, 2011. Several extracts are now available to the public.

Extracts of the first images acquired by the Pléiades 1A satellite are made available to the public by the French space agency, CNES. These extracts can be downloaded from a FTP site. The precision of the 50-cm Pléiades products are clearly revealed on the urban landscapes of Paris, Madrid and San Francisco.


Source: Astrium

Read more after the jump.