Global high resolution imaging for new markets

Paper number

IAC-08.B1.2.7

Author

Mr. Eric Maliet, EADS Astrium, France

Coauthor

Mrs. Laure Brooker, Astrium SAS France, France

Coauthor

Mr. Dominique Pawlak, EADS Astrium, France

Year

2008

Abstract

The unique advantages brought by imaging from space reside in a global coverage capability and a quick accessibility to and frequent revisit of the scenes of interest. On this respect, there is an increasing demand for global coverage of the Earth with a frequent revisit. This is the case for many environment related applications, aiming at tracking global vegetation or urban changes over time, but it is also expected that all geo-referenced applications will move towards a global high-resolution map of the Earth, with an image refreshment frequent enough to allow end users to actually see the changes in the places they live in or plan to visit. This is viewed as a genuine challenge, since moving to higher resolution has in general always been achieved at the expense of the image swath, resulting in smaller image areas.
Thanks to its experience in the domain of systematic global imaging, Astrium is offers an affordable and scalable global imaging systems achieving a repetitive global true-colours mapping of the whole globe with a high spatial resolution. These systems are based on a constellation of small satellites — image refreshment is increased by adding new satellites in the constellation. High-resolution instruments are implemented on low-cost autonomous platforms systematically acquiring images over lands. Solutions are proposed to deal with the main issues associated with such a system: the very high data volume generated on board are filtered down thanks to adaptative compression and on-board cloud detection, whilst providing cloud-free image products is ensured by an ad hoc satellites programming scheme and suitable ground processing at mosaic production level.
Such a system represents a breakthrough in the world of space optical imaging, by offering a continuous global view of our planet. This is made possible thanks to the availability of affordable high-resolution sensors, as developed by Astrium, and of powerful on-board digital processing techniques. All technologies needed for this mission are readily available, and constellation deployment could start as early as 2012.

Abstract document

IAC-08.B1.2.7.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-08.B1.2.7.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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