Imagine, at a total cost of some $502 million to date, GeoEye-1 is now in orbit after a launch on Sept 6, 2008. Recall GeoEye-1 is part of a $500-million NextView contract awarded to ORBIMAGE (Now GeoEye) September 30, 2004. Expect the imagery to serve a wide array of applications for defense, national and homeland security, air and marine transportation, oil and gas, mining, mapping and location-based services, state and local government planning, insurance and risk management, agriculture, and environmental monitoring.
Having an unrivaled spatial resolution of 0.41-meters, GeoEye-1 is designed to have three-meter accuracy, which means that customers can map natural and man-made features to within three meters of their actual locations on the surface of the Earth without ground control points. This level of accuracy is unsurpassed. At 0.41-meter resolution, GeoEye-1 would be able to 'see' home plate on a baseball diamond and be able to precisely locate it within three meters of its true location on the surface of the globe.
Some Quick Facts:
GeoEye-1, a polar-orbiting satellite, can revisit any point on Earth once every three days or sooner
GeoEye-1 makes 15 orbits per day flying at an altitude of 681 kilometers or 423 miles with an orbital velocity of about 7.5 km/sec
GeoEye-1 offers three-meter geolocation accuracy
can collect images with a ground resolution of 0.41-meters or 16 inches in the panchromatic or black and white mode
n the panchromatic mode the satellite collects up to 700,000 square kilometers in a single day and in the multispectral mode 350,000 square kilometers per day
GeoEye-1 customers have a choice of ordering basic, ortho-rectified or stereo imagery as well as imagery-derived products
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
GeoEye-1 Facts
GeoEye-1 is part of the NGA NextView program. The NextView program is designed to ensure that the NGA has access to commercial imagery in support of its mission to provide timely, relevant and accurate geospatial intelligence in support of national security. GeoEye won its $500-million NextView contract in September 2004 and was able to build and launch GeoEye-1 without any contract cost overruns in less than four years after contract award.
GeoEye-1 will simultaneously collect 0.41-meter ground resolution black-and-white (panchromatic) images and 1.65-meter color (multispectral) images. Designed to take digital images of the Earth from 423 miles (681 kilometers) and moving at a speed of about four-and-a-half miles (seven kilometers) per second, the satellite camera can distinguish objects on the Earth’s surface as small as 0.41-meter or 16 inches in size. Due to U.S. licensing restrictions, commercial customers will get access to imagery at half-meter ground resolution.
GeoEye-1 was built by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Gilbert, Ariz. The imaging system was built by ITT in Rochester, NY. ITT is also building the imaging system for GeoEye-2 slated for launch in 2011. 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.
Camera Modes
* Simultaneous panchromatic and multispectral (pan-sharpened)
* Panchromatic only
* Multispectral only
Resolution 0.41 m / 1.34 ft* panchromatic (nominal at Nadir)
1.65 m / 5.41 ft* multispectral (nominal at Nadir)
Metric Accuracy/Geolocation CE stereo: 2 m / 6.6 ft
LE stereo : 3 m / 9.84 ft
CE mono: 2.5 m / 8.20 ft
These are specified as 90% CE (circular error) for the horizontal and 90% LE (linear error) for the vertical with no ground control
Swath Widths &
Representative Area Sizes
* Nominal swath width - 15.2 km / 9.44 mi at Nadir
* Single-point scene - 225 sq km (15x15 km)
* Contiguous large area - 15,000 sq km (300x50 km)
* Contiguous 1° cell size areas - 10,000 sq km (100x100 km)
* Contiguous stereo area - 6,270 sq km (224x28 km)
(Area assumes pan mode at highest line rate)
Collection Capacity:
Up to 700,000 sq km/day (270,271 sq mi/day) of pan area (about the size of Texas)
Up to 350,000 sq km/day (135,135 sq mi/day) of pan-sharpened multispectral area (about the size of New Mexico)
Recall GeoEye-1 is aprt of a $500-million NextView contract awarded on September 30, 2004
The U.S. Government, through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), announced in March 2003 that it intended to support the continued development of the commercial satellite imagery industry by sharing the costs for the engineering, construction and launch of the next generation of commercial imagery satellites. ORBIMAGE (now GeoEye, Inc.) won the second of two $500-million NextView contracts on September 30, 2004. A contract to build the satellite was awarded to General Dynamics in late 2004.
It is estimated that the total cost to bring the GeoEye-1 satellite into service was approximately $502 million
While GeoEye-1 will be able to collect imagery at 0.41-meter ground resolutions, the Company’s operating license from the U.S. Government requires re-sampling the imagery to 0.5-meter for all customers not explicitly granted a waiver by the U.S. Government.
Besides the unrivaled spatial resolution of 0.41-meters or about 16 inches, GeoEye-1 is designed to have three-meter accuracy, which means that customers can map natural and man-made features to within three meters of their actual locations on the surface of the Earth without ground control points. This level of accuracy is unsurpassed. At 0.41-meter resolution, GeoEye-1 would be able to 'see' home plate on a baseball diamond and be able to precisely locate it within three meters of its true location on the surface of the globe.
Expect commercial imagery to be available in several months although orders are now being accepted.
GeoEye-1 was built by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Gilbert, Ariz. The imaging system was built by ITT in Rochester, NY. ITT is also building the imaging system for GeoEye-2 slated for launch in 2011. 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.
A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket, on behalf of Boeing Launch Services, blasts off at 11:50.57 a.m. Sept 6, 2008 PDT with the GeoEye-1 satellite from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The successful launch concluded approximately 75 minutes later with signal acquisition from the satellite in its proper orbit. Photo by Carleton Bailie, The Boeing Company/GeoEye
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Imagine, at a total cost of some $502 million to date, GeoEye-1 is now in orbit 
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