Airbus has enlarged its high-resolution imagery portfolio following an agreement to leverage capacity from the S1-4 satellite built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL). The new imagery offer — called Vision-1 — delivers end-to-end imaging operations to Airbus’ customers.
Vision-1 provides 0.9-meter resolution imagery in the panchromatic band and 3.5-meter in the multispectral bands (NIR, RGB), with a 20.8-kilometer swath width. These specifications are ideal for defence, security and agriculture applications, while this extra revisit opportunity further strengthens Airbus’ satellite fleet.
“This new asset will reinforce our monitoring capabilities for sub-metre imaging, and feed our OneAtlas digital platform to provide increased freshness,” said François Lombard, director of Intelligence Business at Airbus Defence and Space.
Vision-1 operations will be coordinated by Airbus in the UK, following integration into the UK Mission Operation Centre, which operates the commercial imaging of the DMC Constellation. This is an important step for UK sovereign imaging capability, Airbus said, adding sub-meter data to the existing UK imaging capabilities.
As Vision-1 was launched in September 2018 together with NovaSAR, this opens significant opportunities for applications combining optical and radar satellite imagery.
Along with Vision-1, Airbus offers commercial access to the largest fleet of Earth Observation satellites: Pléiades, SPOT 6/7, DMC Constellation and the weather-independent radar satellites TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X and PAZ.
How are oblique views derived from aerial imagery?
Typically, a camera takes a field of view of 120 degrees (+/– 60 degrees either side of centerline). The nadir is straight down +/– 5 degrees either side, but everything beyond is considered oblique imagery.
Overlapping imagery is required to ensure clean images and to reduce the angle of obliquity. Too much of an oblique angle causes parallax, which distorts the image, so it is usual for imagery to overlap by 70% each pass, meaning that 30% either side of center is used, but everything except for a small path considered nadir is double imaged.
However, in the case of stereographic imagery, which is required for building a 3D mesh, the overlap has to cover the centerline of the last flight path, so the flights must be much closer together.
Oblique imagery allows 3D meshes to be created, which is a huge benefit to geospatial analysis. It allows the actual terrain to be measured not in a straight line, but in an actual topographic line that includes elevation changes for point-to-point distance.
Additionally, straight lines work when everything looks flat, but in reality straight lines are rare, and point-to-point measurements often have to take advantage of the existing terrain, avoiding steep terrain and aiming to stay on the highest ground to avoid marshy areas.
Oblique imagery also allows for mensuration, which is the measurement of the vertical based on the trigonometry of the sensor’s position and height compared to the target’s angle. More than one oblique image of the same target area allows for stereographic imagery for building the 3D meshes and seeing in 3D. Without the magic of oblique imagery, GIS would be a 2D science.
A major use of remote sensing data is to compare images of an area taken at different times and identify the changes it underwent. With a wealth of long-term satellite imagery in open use, detecting such changes manually would be time-consuming and most likely inaccurate.
To address this, EOS Data Analytics has introduced an automated Change Detection tool to its flagship product LandViewer, a cloud tool for satellite imagery search and analysis in today’s market.
Unlike the methods involving neural networks that identify changes in the previously extracted features, the change detection algorithm implemented by EOS is using a pixel-based strategy, meaning that changes between two raster multi-band images are mathematically calculated by subtracting the pixel values for one date from the pixel values of the same coordinates for another date.
This new signature feature is designed to automate a change detection task and deliver accurate results in fewer steps and in a fraction of the time needed for change detection in most image-processing software.
Change detection interface: Images of Beirut city coastline selected for tracing the developments of the past years. (Image: LandViewer)Change detection interface: Images of Beirut city coastline selected for tracing the developments of the past years. (Image: LandViewer)
Applications from farming to environmental monitoring
One of the main goals set by EOS team was to make the complex process of change detection in remote sensing data equally accessible and easy for non-expert users coming from non-GIS industries.
With Land Viewer’s change detection tool, farmers can quickly identify the areas on their fields that were damaged by hail, storm or flooding. In forest management, satellite image detection of changes will come in handy for estimation of the burned areas following the wildfire and spotting the illegal logging or encroachment on forest lands.
Observing the rate and extent of climate changes occurring to the planet (such as polar ice melt, air and water pollution, natural habitat loss due to urban expansion) is an ongoing task of environmental scientists, who may now have it done online in a matter of minutes. By studying the differences between the past and present using the change detection tool and years of satellite data in Land Viewer, all these industries can also forecast future changes.
Top change detection use cases: Flood damage and deforestation
A picture is worth a thousand words, and the capabilities of satellite image change detection in Land Viewer can be best demonstrated on real-life examples.
Forests that still cover around a third of the world’s area are disappearing at an alarming rate, mostly due to human activities such as farming, mining, grazing of livestock, logging, and also the natural factors like wildfires. Instead of massive ground surveying of thousands of forest acres, a forestry technician can regularly monitor the forest safety with a pair of satellite images and the automated change detection based on NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index).
How does it work? NDVI is a known means of determining vegetation health. By comparing the satellite image of the intact forest with the recent one acquired after the trees were cut down, Land Viewer will detect the changes and generate a difference image highlighting the deforestation spots, which can further be downloaded by users in JPG, PNG or TIFF format. The surviving forest cover will have positive values, while the cleared areas will have negative ones and be shown in red hues indicating there’s no vegetation present.
A difference image showing the extent of deforestation in Madagascar between 2016 and 2018; generated from two Sentinel-2 satellite images. (Image: LandViewer)
Another widespread use case for change detection would be agricultural flood damage assessment, which is of most interest to crop growers and insurance companies. Whenever flooding has taken a heavy toll on your harvest, the damage can be quickly mapped and measured with the help of NDWI-based change detection algorithms.
Results of Sentinel-2 scene change detection: The red and orange areas represent the flooded part of the field,; the surrounding fields are green, meaning they avoided the damage. California flooding, February 2017. (Image: LandViewer)
How to run change detection in Land Viewer
There are two ways you can launch the tool and start finding differences on multi-temporal satellite images: by clicking the right menu icon “Analysis tools” or from the Comparison slider ‒ whichever is more convenient. Currently, change detection is performed on optical (passive) satellite data only; addition of the algorithms for active remote sensing data is scheduled for future updates.
Phase One Industrial has expanded its RS and RSM lens offering with three new high performance lenses for high-altitude aerial photography and long-range aerial and ground inspection applications.
The 300mm AF, 180mm, and 150mm MK II lenses are designed to enhance the performance and flexibility of Phase One Industrial’s iXM-RS and iXM aerial camera series. Each offers precision imagery, taking advantage of the cameras’ ultra-high resolution backside-illuminated (BSI) CMOS sensors, to maintain a smaller ground sample distance (GSD) while flying at higher altitudes, the company said.
Phase One RSM 300mmAF. With the longest focal length in the line-up, this lens offers a 5 cm GSD from 13,000 feet. It fits both iXM and iXM-RS camera models and produces superb image quality by enhancing the cameras’ ultra-high resolution BSI CMOS sensors (3.76 µm pixels).
The lens is designed for both high-altitude 2D and 3D mapping and long-range ground inspection. The motorized lens offers a focus range of 10 m to infinity within which a predefined distance can be set remotely. A self-locking mechanism is built in to secure the focus position against vibrations.
5 cm GSD from 13,000 feet
10 m to infinity focusing range
f/8 – f/32 aperture range
1/2000 sec exposure time
RS Shutter reliability – 500,000 actuations
Rodenstock RS 180mm. Specified by Phase One and built by Rodenstock Photo Optics, Germany, this lens reaches a 5 cm GSD from 8,000 feet when used with the iXM-RS150F camera. The lens supports the camera’s ultra-high resolution BSI sensor for greater image quality and is integrated with a Phase One RS reliance shutter for speed and reliability. The RS 180mm enhances high-altitude aerial 2D and 3D mapping and improves efficiency in oblique configurations.
5 cm GSD from 8,000 feet
f/6.3 – f/22 aperture range
1/2000 sec exposure time
RS Shutter reliability – 500,000 actuations
Phase One RS 150mm MK II. A 5 cm GSD from 6,500 feet is achievable with the RS 150mm MK II lens. It complements the iXM-RS150F camera’s ultra-high 150-megapixel resolution BSI CMOS sensor for acquiring quality images for high-altitude aerial 2D and 3D mapping.
5 cm GSD from 6,500 feet
f/5.6 – f/22 aperture range
1/2500 sec exposure time
RS Shutter reliability – 500,000 actuations
Every Phase One Industrial lens is rigidly built for robustness against vibrations and shocks to meet RTCA DO160G standards, and is individually tested for performance and high-modulation across the whole image area.
SimActive Inc., a developer of photogrammetry software, announced that Correlator3D is being used for mapping projects in Brittany, France, by Altimedias.
An eBee X equipped with senseFly S.O.D.A. 3D camera is flown along the shoreline to produce high-resolution true orthomosaics and 3D models.
“The quality of outputs from Correlator3D is exceptional and the mosaic renders the vivid colours of the Pink Granite Coast,” said Didier Wasselin, COO at Altimedias, which specializes in drone data collection and processing. “Such results are very useful for heritage conservation and decision making by local authorities.”
“The combination of SimActive software and senseFly eBee Plus X is an ideal combination, due to the accurate RTK/PPK and optimized aerial triangulation,” said Francois Gervaix, technical advisor at SimActive. “The S.O.D.A. oblique imagery leads to outstanding 3D textured models.”
Airbus Defence and Space and The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of Bayer, have announced a global agreement to deliver frequently updated satellite imagery from Airbus to farmers through Climate FieldView, a digital agriculture platform.
Farmers who use Climate FieldView can access high-resolution data of their fields from the Airbus SPOT 6, SPOT 7 and Pléiades satellites throughout the growing season. This gives FieldView customers the ability to more precisely monitor crop health and performance, helping them take action in the field before yield is impacted at the end of the season.
They will also be able to visualize this satellite imagery alongside other data layers in their FieldView account, including planting and yield data, to unlock new insights about crop health.
The large swath and coverage capabilities of the SPOT satellites enable mapping at a national level down to individual farmland parcels, while the Pléiades satellites can be used to pinpoint details in specific areas, thanks to its combination of sub-meter resolution and multispectral bands.
The complementarity between SPOT and Pléiades resolutions, swaths and revisits is crucial for effectively monitoring crops more precisely and helps enable more-informed decision-making.
“We are very pleased to be working with The Climate Corporation to enhance FieldView by providing them with access to updated, cloud-free images within the time frame required to efficiently monitor crops at each key growth stage,” said François Lombard, head of Intelligence Business at Airbus Defence and Space.
“High-quality satellite imagery integrated into a farmer’s Climate FieldView account can bring in more consistent and invaluable field-level insights,” said Steven Ward, Senior Director of Geospatial and Weather Sciences at The Climate Corporation. “This partnership with Airbus supports Climate’s commitment to deliver the most robust imagery ecosystem on the farm, helping farmers make important decisions tailored precisely to their individual fields.”
The Climate Corporation’s mission is to help the world’s farmers sustainably increase their productivity through the use of digital tools. First launched in the United States in 2015, the company’s Climate FieldView platform gives farmers a deeper understanding of their fields so they can make more informed operating decisions to optimize yields, maximize efficiency and reduce risk.
FieldView is currently on more than 60 million paid acres across the United States, Canada, Brazil and Europe.
The contract marks an important step in the long-term partnership between SSC and Airbus, and extends the capabilities of both companies.
The first two very high-resolution Pléiades Neo satellites will be launched in mid-2020, followed by a second pair in 2022. They will join the existing Airbus constellation of optical and radar satellites, and will offer enhanced performance, and the highest reactivity in the market.
SSC will provide comprehensive ground segment support for the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP), as well as routine on-orbit support for Telemetry, Tracking and Control (TT&C) and data reception.
Ground Network. The core SSC ground network for Pléiades Neo will consist of the unique dual polar ground station solution of Kiruna, Sweden, and Inuvik, Canada — often referred to as “Kinuvik” as it is operated as a virtual single polar station.
The partnership also includes an option to provide potentially higher data volumes at a later stage, using the southern hemisphere station of Punta Arenas, Chile.
The optimized and highly resilient SSC ground network provides effective tasking and downloading of large data volumes more than once every orbit, enabling rapid delivery of Pléiades Neo data from anywhere on Earth.
The ground network has been designed by SSC and Airbus to complement Airbus’ Direct Receiving Stations (DRS) as well as the Airbus SpaceDataHighway relay satellite system, while being flexible to adapt to changing seasonal needs and to give critical network diversity.
“The Pléiades Neo constellation will be adding two million km² per day at 30-cm resolution to Airbus’ imagery offering. As tasking and downloading will be possible in every orbit, up to 60 times a day for the constellation, we need to rely on very efficient commercial polar communication services,” said François Lombard, head of Intelligence Business at Airbus Defence and Space.
“Pléiades Neo is a cutting edge very high resolution Earth Observation constellation, and this represents a huge milestone in the close cooperation between Airbus and SSC. We are proud to be able to support Airbus in providing such critical optical imagery for the global marketplace”, said Stefan Gardefjord, CEO at SSC.
Airbus Defence and Space has launched The OneAtlas Platform, a collaborative environment to access premium imagery, perform large-scale image processing, extract insights and benefit from Airbus assets for solution development.
OneAtlas is offering a 30-day free trial, giving customers streaming access to imagery, sample change detection reports, and global imagery and data layers, including the basemap and the WorldDEM.
Besides access to a comprehensive archive with premium imagery, users can try services such as:
Ocean Finder for the maritime industry
Verde for precision agriculture
Starling for forest management
Earth Monitor for tracking changes over an area of interest
The developer portal provides more information through API documentation and discusses how to benefit from the imagery either in streaming or download format.
The Ocean Finder provides a satellite-based maritime ship detection service. (Photo: OneAtlas)
The Canadian Department of National Defence has awarded a $11.44 million contract to Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) for the development of multipurpose microsatellites to support Arctic surveillance.
Upon successful completion and testing of the prototype, two additional microsatellites will be built to create a small formation.
The UTIAS SFL microsatellites, which are now being developed, will include multiple sensors on a constellation of microsatellites operating in close formation in low Earth orbit to allow for quick and timely detection and identification of surface or airborne targets.
The concurrently obtained sensor observations are expected to improve the reliability of the detection and identification performance, which is not feasible when individual sensors are located on non-collaborating satellites.
On behalf of Defence Minister Harjit S. Sajjan, member of Parliament for York Centre, Michael Levitt announced the contract on Feb 1 during a ceremony at U
“Space Flight Laboratory is honored to assist the Department of National Defence in developing next-generation satellite technology that could be used to monitor Canada’s vital Arctic region,” said SFL Director and Founder Robert E. Zee. “We are pleased that this investment acknowledges SFL as one of the world’s preeminent developers of advanced attitude control and formation-flying technologies for microsatellites.”
Established in 1998 as a self-sustaining specialty lab at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), SFL has built more than 25 nano- and microsatellites with over 95 cumulative years of successful operation in orbit. SFL’s attitude-control technologies have also been applied successfully in several other microspace programs as well, including the 2016 GHGSat-D greenhouse gas emissions monitoring satellite and the 2013-2014 BRITE space astronomy constellation.
As outlined in its defence policy Strong, Secure, Engaged, the Department of National Defence is investing in defence research and development to produce innovative solutions to surveillance challenges in Canada’s North, particularly in the priority areas of Arctic joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Surveillance solutions support the Canadian government’s ability to exercise sovereignty in the North and provide a greater awareness of safety and security issues, as well as transportation and commercial activity in Canada’s Arctic. In addition, solutions achieved under the ADSA program will contribute to joint efforts between Canada and the United States to modernize elements of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
The ADSA S&T Program leverages innovative science & technology expertise from other government departments, academia, industry and allies, to identify, assess and validate technologies in support of air and maritime surveillance, particularly in the North. Through a five-year investment of $133M through to 2020, the ADSA S&T Program is supporting the development of options for enhanced domain awareness of air, maritime surface and sub-surface approaches to Canada, in particular those in the Arctic.
Airbus Defence and Space and Hisdesat Servicios Estratégicos S.A. have generated the first joint TerraSAR-X/PAZ radar interferogram. This milestone demonstrates the missions’ capacity for cross-sensor interferometry, whose processing is among the most challenging.
Interferograms are typically used to derive the topographic elevation and deformation of the Earth’s surface, and are created using at least two different images acquired at different date. This flattened cross-sensor-interferogram has been created from a mixed image pair with four days’ temporal separation acquired by TerraSAR-X and PAZ (StripMap scenes from Nov. 22-26, 2018). The area covers the oil and gas production site Burgan (Kuwait) and parts of the Persian Gulf. The oil field is the world largest sandstone oil field with the total surface area of about 1,000 km².
As PAZ is positioned in the same orbit as TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X and features exactly identical ground swaths and acquisition modes, they all three form a high-resolution SAR satellite constellation, jointly exploited by Hisdesat and Airbus. With the launch of PAZ, the observation repeat cycle has been divided by half, which improves the monitoring of fast ground deformation phenomena that can endanger lives and infrastructures.
“This is a major step towards achieving the implementation of our TerraSAR-X/PAZ radar constellation,” said Hanjo Kahabka, head of production and radar constellation manager at Airbus. “The level of accuracy obtained with this interferogram is a guarantee for our customers to continue to rely on the high quality standard we have set with TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, but with an improved monitoring capacity,”
“In Hisdesat we are very proud of reaching this milestone. Interferometry is one of the most technically demanding applications, and thanks to this successful joint exercise with Airbus we have not only demonstrated the top performance of our PAZ satellite but its full compatibility with TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X,” said Miguel García Primo, CEO at Hisdesat. “Now operation in constellation can become a reality and we will be able to provide to our customers full set of images and services with the constellation.”
Nearmap high-resolution aerial image of Durham, North Carolina, photographed Jan. 15. (Photo: Nearmap)
Location content provider Nearmap has partnered with the city of Durham, North Carolina, to help it manage infrastructure projects.
The city’s Public Works Department uses Nearmap’s high-resolution imagery to aid in managing all infrastructure data for the city, including the city’s $16 million a year Stormwater Utility Fund.
“Having access to imagery back to 2014, we’re able to go back in time during the thrust of development and monitor it forward,” said Edward Cherry, Durham’s GIS administrator. “With Nearmap, we’ve been able to update development processes and policies to support the revitalization of the downtown district as well as rapid city growth.”
After using satellite imagery systems with low resolution and infrequent captures, Cherry and his staff of 14 GIS professionals determined the city needed superior mapping imagery.
Captured every six months at a 2.8-inch ground sample distance, Nearmap supplies Durham with clear images that are up-to-date and accessible through web-based cloud servers, the company said.
The result is better monitoring of pavement conditions; time savings and documentation of road repairs; more detailed maps of city riparian zones; and accurate and detailed customer billing.
CityMapper is a hybrid airborne sensor combining vertical and oblique imagery with 3D laser scanning designed for 3D city modeling and urban mapping.
Using the CityMapper, Bluesky was able to capture parts of London, Manchester and Birmingham as well as Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Norwich, Nottingham and Oxford. Bluesky intends to increase its coverage by capturing additional towns and cities across the U.K. and Ireland in 2019.
St. Paul’s Cathedral in London captured in lidar point-cloud data. (Image: Bluesky)
According to Bluesky, this is the first time the technology has been used commercially in the UK to this level. The captured city data is available from Bluesky and Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, in its constituent components of vertical orthorectified aerial imagery, oblique photographs and lidar point cloud data. Plans are in place to also include the imagery in the HxGN Content Program.
The combination of multiple survey-grade cameras and lidar enables the simultaneous capture of data for the automatic creation of highly accurate and detailed citywide 3D models, with one sensor, according to Bluesky.
Previous 3D models have either been prohibitively expensive for use across larger areas or of insufficient detail or accuracy. The CityMapper sensor enabled efficient, cost-effective capture of highly detailed and accurate data, and could make possible widespread use of 3D models possible.
The CityMapper sensor is designed for 3D city modeling and urban mapping. (Photo: Leica Geosystems)
CityMapper includes a traditional vertical camera as well as survey-grade oblique cameras. The sensor also includes high-performance lidar technology to accurately collect elevation data even into the shadows, which are common in urban environments and make photo-based data collection difficult.
The CityMapper sensor also collects color infrared data, which can be used to aid greenspace mapping and vegetation studies.
Applications of the new Bluesky 3D models are expected to include urban planning, line-of-sight analysis, new development visualizations and environmental modeling, as well as potentially 3D fly throughs and virtual reality experiences. Early adopters of the data include architects, planning consultants and other map publishers.
