Between the Poles: Airbus constellation of Earth observation satellites adds SPOT7

Geoff Zeiss

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The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
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Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
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« France moving toward mandating BIM for public procurement in 2017 | Main | Geospatial + BIM and full lifecycle building management »

December 02, 2014

Airbus constellation of Earth observation satellites adds SPOT7

Last June Airbus Defence and Space's SPOT 7 Earth-observation satellite was launched successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in India. The first images from SPOT7 were released three days after the launch,

Today SPOT 7 was commercially launched, making its high-resolution imagery available to all users. SPOT 7 joins Airbus's constellation of SPOT 6, Pléiades 1A & 1B, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X Earth observation satellites. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 cover wide areas with a resolution of 1.5m. Pléiades 1A and 1B offers 50 cm resolution. TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X can dependably acquire 25 to 40 cm resolution as well as wide-area radar images independent of weather conditions.

With SPOT7 the acquisition capacity of the Airbus constellation has reached six million square kilometres per day. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 are phased 180° on the same orbit as the Pléiades constellation, thus combining wide-area collection with the ability to image and revisit point targets the same day. The Airbus constellation makes it possible to view every day, every point on the globe in both high-resolution (1.5 m) by a SPOT satellite and in very high-resolution (50 cm) by a Pléiades satellite.

Posted at 12:30 PM in Earth from space, Earth observation from satellites, Imagery | Permalink

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Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

October 2024

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December 02, 2014

Airbus constellation of Earth observation satellites adds SPOT7

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