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Imaging

Oct 2012 | No Comment

INDUSTRY | LBS | GNSS | GIS | IMAGING | GALILEO UPDATE

China to promote drones for marine surveillance

China will promote the use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to strengthen the nation’s marine surveillance, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said. The SOA verified and accepted a pilot program of using drones to undertake remote-sensing marine surveillance in Lianyungang, a costal city in eastern Jiangsu Province. With the experience learned from the pilot program, the SOA would try to form a managerial system and technical regulations in a bid to set up UAV surveillance and monitoring bases in provinces along China’s coastline by 2015.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/

PSLV orbits commercial remote sensing satellite

An Indian launcher lifted off and placed France’s Spot 6 commercial Earth imaging satellite and a Japanese secondary payload into orbit 400 miles high on September 9, 2012. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle lifted off at 0423 GMT (12:23 a.m. EDT) from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sriharikota Island, India’s primary launch site on the country’s east coast about 50 miles north of Chennai. The rocket also orbited the student-built Proiteres microsatellite for the Osaka Institute of Technology in Japan. The 1,569-pound Spot 6 satellite will collect high-resolution imagery, resolving objects as small as 1.5 meters, or about 4.9 feet. The launch marked India’s 100th space mission, including indigenous rockets and Indian-built satellites.

First Images from SPOT 6 Satellite

Astrium Services has posted the first images from the SPOT 6 satellite, just 3 days after its launch on 9 September. These first images present very varied landscapes, highlighting SPOT 6’s potential for applications like urban and natural resource mapping or agricultural and environmental monitoring.

US Dept of Justice seeks detail of DigitalGlobe merger

DigitalGlobe said that the Department of Justice, US, is seeking further information about its planned acquisition of GeoEye.
The Department of Justice has sent two requests to DigitalGlobe for information about the deal, which the company says are a standard part of the regulatory process. Their requests extend the waiting period under certain antitrust laws that prohibit the deal from closing until the information is provided by the company, or until the federal government lifts the waiting period.

Charter offers ‘Universal Access’ to satellite data

The international space organisation that makes timely satellite data available to rescue authorities is now offering ‘Universal Access’ to the data for emergency response purposes, strengthening its contribution to disaster management worldwide. Founded by ESA and the French and Canadian space agencies, the Charter is an international collaboration between the owners and operators of Earth observation missions. It provides rapid access to satellite data to help disaster management authorities in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.
www.esa.int

NASA ER-2 aircraft helping to test new science instruments

NASA will be using an ER-2 high altitude research aircraft to fl y test models of two future satellite instruments. The aircraft will be used to take models of these instruments at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet to gather information researchers will use to develop ways to handle data that future space born versions will collect. The aircraft will be carrying the Cloud- Aerosol Transport System (CATS) and the Multiple Altimeter Beam Experiment Lidar (MABEL) up to high altitudes for tests. CATS is a high spectral resolution lidar that uses a laser to help scientists have a better understanding of clouds and aerosols. MABEL is a laser altimeter built to simulate the primary instrument on ICESat-2, which will study land, sea ice and vegetation. http://www.redorbit.com/news/

New VG4D-SmartLiDARRoadXtract from Virtual Geomatics

Virtual Geomatics SmartLiDAR RoadXtract™ software is specially developed to cater to the needs of today’s transportation industry. It is a stand-alone, feature rich software solution, designed to provide the Departments of Transportation & Roadway Engineering contractors an easy path to incorporating LiDAR data for their road design and analysis. It can directly import data from variety of popular mobile, terrestrial and airborne lidar sensors to generate outputs compatible with industry standard Autodesk and Bentley packages.
http://www.itnewsonline.com/

RaLi– mobile lidar for rail Surveying Solutions

RaLiis a purposebuilt vehicle that can travel along railway lines, on the tracks, and provide mobile laser scanning. It’s what’s known as a “hirail” vehicle, which means it can travel on both normal roadways and train tracks (it’s a modified Ford F-350, actually), and the company has equipped it with a specially manufactured frame that allows the company to quickly and easily attach the same Riegl VMX-250-based mobile scanning solution it uses for normal roadway scanning.
http://www.sparpointgroup.com/News/

LiDAR survey uncovers Skokholm island settlements

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, UK said a new laser survey from the air uncovered new clues to the history of a Pembrokeshire island. LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technique was used to draw a detailed model of the island’s surface. The new discoveries include the remains of enclosures and fields underlying the field pattern of the island’s 19th Century farm. Some of the discoveries show similar but less complex activity to that on the neighbouring island of Skomer.