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About GeoEye-1

Resolution:GeoEye-1 have the highest resolution of any commercial imaging system and collect images with a ground resolution of 41 cm or 16 inches in the panchromatic or black and white mode. It will collect multispectral or color imagery at 165 cm resolution or about 64 inches, a factor of two better than existing commercial satellites with four-band multispectral imaging capabilities. While the satellite will be able to collect imagery at 41 cm, GeoEye's operating license from the U.S. Government requires re-sampling the imagery to 50 cm for all customers not explicitly granted a waiver by the U.S. Government.

Launch: About GeoEye-1

Agility:

GeoEye-1, a polar-orbiting satellite, will be able to revisit any point on Earth once every three days or sooner. Though it stands two stories high and weighs more than two tons, GeoEye-1 is designed to deftly train the ITT camera on multiple targets during a single orbital pass and is able to rotate or swivel forward, backward or side-to-side with robotic precision. This unrivaled agility will enable it to collect much more imagery during a single pass.

 

Accuracy:

Besides unsurpassed spatial resolution of 0.41-meters or about 16 inches, GeoEye-1 is designed to be able to offer three-meter geolocation accuracy, which means that customers can map natural and man-made features to within three meters (about 9 feet) of their actual location on the surface of the Earth without ground control points. This degree of inherent accuracy has never been achieved in any commercial imaging system and will remain unchallenged even when next-generation commercial systems are launched in the coming years.

 

Construction:

GeoEye-1 was built by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Gilbert , Arizona .

The imaging system was built by ITT in Rochester , New York . The 4310-pound satellite was launched at 11:50 a.m. PDT on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California .

The launch of GeoEye-1 marks the 83rd consecutive successful launch of the Delta II rocket.

 

 

GeoEye categorizes its imagery products according to resolution and positional accuracy, which is an assessment of the closeness of the object's location in relation to its true position on the Earth's surface. Location error is defined in relation to a confidence level (i.e., range of error) of 90% (CE90)—meaning that the object's location is represented on the image, within the stated accuracy, 90% of the time.

The CE90 accuracy scale can be related to Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) as well as the U.S. National Map Accuracy Standards (NMAS).

 

GeoEye-1 customers will have a choice of ordering basic, ortho-rectified or stereo imagery as well as imagery-derived products, including Digital Elevation Models (DEM’s) and Digital Surface Models (DSM’s), large area mosaics and feature maps. These GeoEye-1 products will serve a wide variety of applications for:

  • Defense
  • National and Homeland Security
  • Air and Marine Transportation
  • Oil and Gas
  • Energy
  • Mining
  • Mapping and Location-based Services
  • State and Local Government
  • Insurance and Risk Management
  • Agriculture
  • Natural Resources and Environmental Monitoring

Geo:

 
 
The foundation of the GeoEye imagery product line, the Geo, is a radiometrically corrected map oriented image suitable for a wide range of uses. In addition to being suitable for visualization and monitoring applications, the Geo is shipped with the sensor camera model in rational polynomial coefficient (RPC) format. This camera model maps the respective ground coordinates to image product coordinates. Block adjustment, ortho-rectification, and other photogrammetric processing can be performed with the RPC camera model. This product, coupled with a digital elevation model (DEM), permits skilled users to make their own orthorectified products using standard commercial software and available data sets. Geo imagery products are available as panchromatic, multispectral, and pan-sharpened color imagery.

 

Geo Professional:

  

GeoProfessional products are orthorectified (terrain corrected) by GeoEye’s staff of experienced production personnel using proprietary processes perfected in our production facilities and optimized to the data collected by GeoEye satellites. The ortho-rectification process employed by GeoEye enables us to quickly deliver the most accurate and precise terrain corrected multispectral products available from a satellite platform. Available in various levels of accuracy, GeoProfessional, Precision and PrecisionPlus, these products are suitable for feature extraction, change detection, base mapping and other similar applications. GeoProfessional imagery products are available as panchromatic, multispectral, and pan-sharpened color imagery.

Geo Stereo:

  
 

Providing a strong base for three-dimensional feature recognition, extraction and exploitation, the GeoStereo product provides two images with stereo geometry to support a wide range of stereo imagery applications such as DEM creation, building height extraction, spatial layers, and three-dimensional feature extraction. Stereo products in epipolar or map projections provide RPC camera model data. The RPC camera model supports block adjustment, three-dimensional stereo extraction, DEM generation, ortho-rectification, and other photogrammetric operations. GeoStereo imagery products are available as panchromatic, multispectral, and pan-sharpened color imagery

 
GeoEye-1's technical specifications:
Volume
In the panchromatic mode the satellite is capable of collecting up to 700,000 square kilometers in a single day, an area about the size of Texas, and in the multispectral mode 350,000 square kilometers per day; the equivalent of photographing in color the entire State of New Mexico. This capability is ideal for large-scale mapping projects. Our customers will have assured access to high-resolution, high-quality commercial imagery well into the 2015 timeframe.

Camera
GeoEye-1’s optical telescope, detectors, focal plane assemblies and high-speed digital processing electronics are capable of processing 700 million pixels per second. GeoEye-1's agile 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 picture. The camera and electronics represent a 5-times gain in power efficiency, a 10-times improvement in weight efficiency and 3-times advance in cost efficiency.

Ground Stations
GeoEye upgraded a centralized command and control ground station facility at its headquarters in Dulles, Virginia. This operations center will send tasking and operating commands to the satellite and receive data downlinks from it. Three other stations will be operated or leased by GeoEye in Barrow, Alaska; Tromso, Norway and Troll, Antarctica. The four ground stations will provide the primary data reception needed due to the large volume of imagery that will be captured by the satellite. The Thornton, Colorado regional operational facility has also been upgraded as a back-up ground station for GeoEye-1.

Learn more about GeoEye-1's imaging, collection and advanced technical specifications.