IMAGING

Enhancing Living Atlas of the world

Maxar Technologies has announced that Esri, will enhance the World Imagery layer with higher resolution Maxar Vivid basemaps in the Living Atlas.

Esri will use Maxar’s Vivid basemaps to upgrade nearly half of the global landmass in Living Atlas from 1.2 m resolution to 60 cm resolution. This enhancement reflects a continued investment from the Esri Living Atlas team to bring the best quality, highest resolution imagery basemaps to ArcGIS Online users for creating more accurate maps and making better decisions.

The Living Atlas is a collection of geographic information from around the globe, including maps, apps and data layers. www.maxar.com

NOAA inks pact with Planet to gain situational awareness of oil spills

Planet Labs PBC has announced a new contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The organization is leveraging Planet’s PlanetScope and SkySat products to evaluate oil spills, track marine debris, detect vessels, and identify large marine mammals like whales. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan caused severe damage in the Gulf of Mexico, including the collapse and sinking of an oil platform. Crude oil from this platform continued to leak for over a decade, in what would become the longest running oil spill in United States history. NOAA began tracking the region with government-provided satellite data to generate reports on the situation. In 2018, NOAA reached out to Planet to explore how having a perspective of change on a near-daily basis around the platform could help inform their work.

Using PlanetScope imagery which provides near-daily imagery at 3 m resolution, NOAA set up an Area of Interest (AOI) around the leaking oil platform and received timely imagery of the region, supporting their evaluations of the quantity of oil leaking into the surrounding environment. These updates were shared within their Marine Pollution Surveillance Report. Following this work, NOAA expanded their work with Planet, and today they observe a large region covering approximately 35,000 sq km in the Gulf of Mexico. www.planet.com

Near Space Labs launches Swifty 3 stratospheric imaging robots

Near Space Labs has announced the launch of its Swifty 3 fleet of advanced stratospheric imaging robots. The Swifty 3 uses weather balloons and proprietary sensors and software to reach elevations nearly twice that of commercial flights, enabling the capture of incredibly high-resolution, high frequency images of landscapes, man-made structures, and changes occurring on the planet to help customers make critically strategic decisions.

The Swifty 3 fleet of stratospheric imaging robots are low cost, manufactured in-house, and easily deployed in almost any location at a moments notice. https://nearspacelabs.com

Beyond Gravity launches “Launchpad”

The international space supplier Beyond Gravity is launching its start-up program “Launchpad” in October 2022. The incubator supports young start-ups and their promising ideas around space technology. In the process, teams are developed from an early stage to an initial investment opportunity. The application period runs until mid-August 2022.

From state-owned enterprise to start-up – Beyond Gravity (formerly RUAG Space) has set itself this maxim as its goal. With its own eight-week start-up program, it now offers young start-ups direct access to the international space community.

The three focal points of the incubator are space technology itself, the optimization of value chains, as well as the human factor in general, because we believe that people make the difference. The first program will start in October 2022. www.beyondgravity.com

RS experts help scientists keep an eye on the Earth

Remote sensing experts from Rochester Institute of Technology are using innovative approaches to help scientists in government and the private sector monitor changes in the Earth›s surface temperature. Scientists from RIT›s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science recently helped successfully bring the new Landsat 9 satellite online and are partnering with a startup on a bold new initiative.

NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat Program provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land and RIT has supported the program dating back to the 1990s. The program launched its latest and most sophisticated satellite, Landsat 9, in September.

Since Landsat 9’s launch, the RIT team has since been working to calibrate its thermal instrument and validate that it is producing consistent results. The calibration activities included an “underfly” event in November where Landsat 9 and its predecessor, Landsat 8, orbited the Earth in tandem to get a comparison of data collected by both. Aaron Gerace, research faculty and a member of RIT’s Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Laboratory, said that experiment leveraged data collected from unique temperature-sensing buoys developed by SUNY Oneonta Associate Professor Kiyoko Yokota.rit.edu

China launches new group of remote sensing satellites

China successfully launched a new group of remote sensing satellites from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on July 29.

The satellites were launched as the third group of the Yaogan-35 family at 9:28 p.m. (Beijing Time) by a Long March-2D carrier rocket and entered the planned orbit successfully.https://english.news.cn