Drought

RapidEye is a full end-to-end commercial Earth Observation system comprising a constellation of five minisatellites, a dedicated SCC (Spacecraft Control Center), a data downlink ground station service, and a full ground segment designed to plan, acquire and process up to 5 million km² of imagery every day to generate unique land information products.
The system is owned and operated by BlackBridge. MDA (MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd) was the mission prime contractor and was responsible for the delivery of the space and ground segments, launch of the constellation, and on-orbit commissioning and camera calibration. The two major subcontractors to MDA were SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.) for the spacecraft bus, SCC and spacecraft AIT (Assembly, Integration and Test) services, as well as Jena Optronik GmbH (JOP) who provided the 5-band multispectral imager (RGB, red edge, and near IR bands).
The RapidEye constellation represents a major milestone... read more

The WorldView-1 offers a high-capacity, panchromatic imaging system which features 0.46m resolution imagery.

Operating at an altitude of 496 kilometers, WorldView-1 satellite has an average revisit time of 1.7 days and is capable of collecting up to 750,000 square kilometers (290,000 square miles) per day of half-meter imagery. The satellite is also equipped with state-of-the-art geo-location capabilities and exhibits stunning agility with rapid targeting and efficient in-track stereo collection.

WorldView-1 satellite sensor was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, U.S.A., at 11:35 Hrs Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) on September 18th, 2007.

Instrument: WV60 (WorldView-60 camera)
- spectral range 0.45 - 0.90 µm
- swath width: 17.6km at nadir
- pushbroom imager

METOP (Meteorological Operational) is Europe's first polar-orbiting operational meteorological satellite. It is the European contribution to the Initial Joint Polar System (IJPS), a co-operative agreement between Eumetsat and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide data for climate and environmental monitoring and improved weather forecasting. The first MetOp-A satellite was launched in 2006, with the other two following at five-year intervals. In total, the programmes will be operational for at least 14 years.
Launched in October 2006, MetOp-A, the first satellite in the series of three, replaced one of two satellite services operated by NOAA and is Europe’s first polar-orbiting satellite dedicated to operational meteorology. Once operational in orbit, responsibilities for the meteorological satellite services have been shared between the USA and Europe.
The MetOp satellites are designed to work in conjunction with the NOAA satellite... read more

ALOS (Advanced Land Observation Satellite) has been decommissioned. ALOS was successfully launched on January 24, 2006 from the Tanegashima Space Center.

ALOS was one of the world's largest earth observation satellites whose function is to collect global and high resolution land observation data. ALOS data was made available at conditions similar to those of ERS and Envisat missions, namely for scientific 'Category-1' use as well as commercial applications.

The ALOS (renamed "Daichi") satellite sensor had three remote-sensing instruments: the Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM) and for digital elevation models (DEMs). The Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2) for precise land coverage observation, and the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) for day-and-night and all-weather land observation and enabled precise land coverage... read more