spacetoday.net: GeoEye releases image from new satellite

Posted: Fri, Oct 10, 2008, 6:22 AM ET (1022 GMT)
GeoEye-1 illustration (GeoEye)

Commercial remote sensing company GeoEye has released the first high-resolution image from its newest satellite, GeoEye-1. The image, released this week, was taken on midday Tuesday and shows the campus of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. The spacecraft was launched on September 6 and had been undergoing on-orbit checkout and calibration since then. The spacecraft is capable of taking images with a resolution as sharp as 0.41 meters per pixel, although government licensing resolutions limit the resolution of commercially-available imagery to 0.5 meters. The spacecraft's construction was financed in part with a NextView contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, who will be a major customer of the spacecraft's imagery; Google will also be a major customer, and holds exclusive rights to use of the spacecraft's images for online mapping applications.