IMAGING

Enhanced operations in Australia by Satellogic

Satellogic Inc has announced that it is enhancing its operations in the Australian market to strengthen its regional customer relationships and provide local support for a growing APAC space economy. It currently operates 22 high-resolution satellites and expects to grow its constellation to 34 satellites by Q1 2023. By 2025, the Company expects to have over 200 satellites in orbit to provide daily remaps of the entire surface of the Earth, and up to 40 revisits of points of interest per day. www.satellogic.com

Freeform printing of satellite antennas in outer Space

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced that the company has developed an on-orbit additive-manufacturing technology that uses photosensitive resin and solar ultraviolet light for the 3D printing of satellite antennas in the vacuum of outer space.

The novel technology makes use of a newly developed liquid resin that was custom formulated for stability in vacuum. The resin enables structures to be fabricated in space using a low-power process that utilizes the sun’s ultraviolet rays for photopolymerization. The technology specifically addresses the challenge of equipping small, inexpensive spacecraft buses with large structures, such as high-gain antenna reflectors, and enables onorbit fabrication of structures that greatly exceed the dimensions of launch vehicle fairings. Resin-based on-orbit manufacturing is expected to enable spacecraft structures to be made thinner and lighter than conventional designs, which must survive the stresses of launch and orbital insertion, thereby reducing both total satellite weight and launch costs. www.mitsubishielectric.com

Unique Integration of UltraCam Eagle and LiDAR Scanner by 95West

95West Aerial Mapping offers innovative data collection by integrating an UltraCam Eagle Mark 3 aerial camera system with a Riegl VQ- 1560 II-S airborne laser scanner in one aircraft. Simultaneous operations controlled with TopoFlight Systems management software cut flight time in half compared to separate missions, and the four-band large-format imagery and LiDAR point cloud are perfectly in sync. In early 2021, 95West purchased the new camera and LiDAR hardware, as well as a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. Custom modifications were made to allow two camera ports to be added, and the combined system was ready to fly by September. The upgraded equipment allows the firm to tailor its products to the needs of the client and deliver custom solutions whenever necessary. www.vexcel-imaging.com

Aerial photography to update digital maps of Qatar completed

The Center for Geographic Information Systems (CGIS) of the Ministry of Municipality has completed the mission of aerial photography for all parts of Qatar and Halul Island to produce the 20cm-accuracy-rated aerial photographs and then update the digital linear maps of the country, as part of the implementation stages of the country’s aerial surveys project.

The aerial photography, which lasted more than 20 days, contributes to providing all state institutions with aerial photographs and updated digital maps for use within the activities and projects of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 tournament and in all other projects of the State in various fields. In the work of aerial surveys and remote sensing, the CGIS used manned aircraft to achieve integration with other data sources that the center currently uses, such as satellite images, mobile field surveys, and drones.

As part of the plan to develop national standards and specifications related to geographic information systems at the state level, carrying out aerial surveys and remote sensing using piloted aircraft comes in integration with other data sources currently used to process and extract rectified aerial images, tilted aerial images, linear data, 3D model data and altitude model, digital (DEM), remote sensing, LIDAR data, bathymetric survey data for bathymetry, marine survey and hyperspectral imaging. www.gulf-times.com

Remote sensing research improves hurricane response

Researchers with the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering’s Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response (RIDER) Center are investigating better ways to predict where roadclogging debris will be most severe after tropical cyclones..

Researchers used satellite images to measure the amount of vegetation in Bay County, Florida, before and after two tropical storms and three hurricanes, including Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm that devastated the county in 2018. That gave them an estimate of how much vegetative debris those storms caused and where debris was heaviest. They were able to correlate debris measurements with factors such as wind speed, initial amount of vegetation and roadway density.

The researchers found debris was heavier in suburban and urban areas, which have a high density of people and roads, compared with rural areas. Although vegetation is not the only type of debris caused by a hurricane, it is an important predictor of where roads will be blocked.

Researchers aim to develop a tool that gives emergency management planners an estimate of the debris storms are likely to generate – allowing officials to plan, for example, where to position trucks and collection zones ahead of storms. https://news.fsu.edu