I've been at the Space Technology and Geo-Informatics 2006 conference and there have been a number of presentations about new earth observation satellites. I've seen presentations from Japan, Thailand, Canada and MDA, and Digital Earth. Japan is planning a new satellite ALOS. Thailand is planning THEOS, Canada and MDA are planning Radarsat II, and Digital Earth is planning Worldview I. All of these satellites appear to be scheduled for launch in 2007. ALOS, THEOS, and Worldview I appear to be equipped with panchromatic telescopes and multi-spectral cameras and are targeting a highest resolution of 1-3m. Radarsat II is different technology, radar, which has a tremendous advantage in that it is not affected by cloud cover. Radarsat II is targeting 1-3 m as their best resolution. The last estimate I heard at a previous conference is that we were generating a terabyte of spatial data a day, not all of which is available to civilians, of course, but with these new satellites which seem for the most part to be gathering data for civilian use, beginning in 2007 it appears that there will be an increasing volume of spatial data available. In fact, 2007 is looking very competitive for spatial data, which should bode well for the availability of data at reasonable prices for users spatial data including on-line services such as Google Earth and Virtual Earth.
Dear Geoff,
ALOS has already been launched by JAXA in 2006. I know this because we have written software for esa to support ALOS data products.
Posted by: Marco Zühlke | November 27, 2006 at 04:01 AM