digitalglobe

DigitalGlobe launching their WorldView-3 satellite today

August 13, 2014

DigitalGlobe, one of the leading providers of imagery for Google Earth, is launching their new WorldView-3 satellite in a few hours. It is scheduled to launch at 11:29am PDT today from Vandenberg Air Force Base, and you can watch a live broadcast of the launch here.

The new satellite will feature some great enhancements over previous ones, including:

Will capture imagery at 31 cm resolution, the highest available resolution on the market. This allows you to see not only a car, but the windshield and the direction the car is going. Something as small as home plate can be seen with 31 cm resolution.
Due to its shortwave infrared sensor, the satellite can actually image through haze, fog, dust, smoke and other air-born particulates.
Beyond crop mapping, this satellite will actually be able to identify moisture levels, differentiate between healthy and unhealthy crops, and even classify species on the ground.
The satellite can identify types of minerals on the earth’s surface
It can identify not only a tree’s class and species, but its health as well

It should be a great step forward for imaging, and ultimately for Google Earth. Check out the infographic below for an overview of the satellite, visit worldview3.digitalglobe.com for more information, and watch the launch live in a few hours.

DigitalGlobe helping to track forest fires

July 31, 2014

DigitalGlobe is one of the leading providers of satellite imagery for Google Earth, and now they’re teaming up with the World Resources Institute to track fires across southeast Asia via their new Global Forest Watch Fires system.

From an article by Yuchen Wu in the Boulder County Business Report:

Nigel Sizer, global director of the World Resource Institute’s Forests Program, said, “With DigitalGlobe’s imagery, you can see down to the individual tree level and even identify species. DigitalGlobe imagery is processed as color-infrared, enabling WRI to quickly distinguish between healthy and dead vegetation, draw burn area boundaries, and detect burn scars in order to assign accountability to the fires.”

It’s a great way to use DigitalGlobe’s impressive ability to capture imagery to make a difference in the world.

Tracking Flight MH17 in Google Earth

July 23, 2014

Last week, Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people on board. While blame is still being passed around for the crash, there are some places using Google Earth to try to better understand what happened.

First is the photo below, found via Twitter, which is using Google Earth to show the path of the flight, the path of the missile, and the crash site. At this point I’ve not been able to find a KML file for this image, but the image itself is rather striking:

Next is a series of images of the crash site, provided by DigitalGlobe. As they often do after a major news event, DigitalGlobe was able to capture imagery of the crash site to help document it from the air. They were unable to capture imagery on July 17 due to cloud cover, but have some from a few days around it.

They’ve also released two KML files to show some of the imagery:

That info comes to us from Amy Svitak at Aviation Week, who has a full article with more photos that is worth checking out.

Higher resolution imagery coming to Google Earth

June 16, 2014

Last week DigitalGlobe, one of the primary suppliers of imagery for Google Earth, was given permission to sell higher resolution imagery. Previously they’ve been limited to selling 50 centimeter imagery, but that limitation has been dropped. They’ll now be able to sell their 41 centimeter imagery, and that will drop to 25 centimeter later this year.

While the difference doesn’t sound like much, Mapbox did a great comparison showing how much better 40 centimeter imagery looks when compared to 50 centimeter imagery.

In short:

If going from 50 cm resolution to 40 cm resolution sounds like a small change at first, remember that we’re talking about square pixels. When square A is only ¼ longer on a side than square B, it contains more than 150% as much area. Therefore, a slightly smaller linear size means a lot more clarity.

No word on when exactly we’ll begin to see this new imagery, but it sounds like we’ll see some of it within the next few months.

(via the Verge)

The next generation of satellites for Google Earth

February 17, 2014

To understand how images make it from satellites in orbit to Google Earth, you should take a look at Frank’s excellent about Google Earth imagery post from a few years ago. In short, Google doesn’t own any satellites that capture imagery; they buy the imagery from providers such as DigitalGlobe.

With that in mind, Richard Hollingham of the BBC took a trip to Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, where the WorldView-3 satellite is currently being assembled for DigitalGlobe.

WorldView-3 will be able to capture imagery at a remarkable resolution of just 25cm, though only the US government can purchase imagery that detailed. For Google Earth (and similar mapping projects, such as Bing Maps), the imagery will be released at a resolution of 50cm. As the article points out, from more than 600km away, travelling at around eight kilometres per second, capturing an image half-a-metre across is an impressive technical achievement, and is less likely to raise concerns about privacy.

It’s an excellent article that shows a bit more about how things work in regards to satellite imagery, and I recommend you check out the full story for yourself.