Washington — A Google backed high-powered GeoEye-1 imaging satellite has beamed its first images back to Earth, barely four days after being launched into space in a successful test of a camera that will supply images for the Internet giant’s free online map and navigation services.
Some five weeks after its launch on Sept. 6 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California; The Dulles, Virginia-based Company GeoEye-1, the satellite orbiting 423 miles above the Earth, developed by aerial and geospatial information provider GeoEye, has started out beaming back images with an extraordinary level of detail.
GeoEye-1 snapped the first panoramic view of Kutztown University, located midway between Reading and Allentown, in Pennsylvania, was the first image ever the satellite saw when the camera door was opened, the world’s highest-resolution commercial satellite sponsored by Google.
The high-resolution color image from GeoEye-1 was taken at 12:00 p.m. EDT on Oct. 7, 2008, while GeoEye-1 was moving north to south in a 423-mile-high (681 km) orbit over the eastern seaboard, traveling 4.5 miles per second, satellite operator GeoEye Inc. said in a statement.
Viewed online, the image shows unprecedented detail than is distinctive of satellite work: The shot was collected at 0.41-meter ground resolution. Academic buildings, parking lots, roads, athletic fields and the track-and-field facility were captured in the image.
Google intends to utilize high-resolution images from GeoEye-1 in Google Earth and Google Maps
Users of Google Maps and Google Earth are about to experience a lot sharper and much clearer pictures, thanks to GeoEye-1, the world’s highest-resolution commercial satellite, although they would not be able to get all of the amazing details that the satellite captures. Those will be reserved for commercial customers and the military.
“We expect the quality of the imagery to be even better as we continue the calibration activity,” said Brad Peterson, GeoEye’s vice president of operations.
Even though the GeoEye-1 satellite sports a colorful Google sticker, its key client is actually not Google but rather the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a U.S. government agency that analyzes imagery in support of national security. The NGA is paying for half of the development of the $502 million satellite and has committed to purchasing imagery from it.
Google is GeoEye’s second major partner. The GeoEye-1 venture is not Google’s only trip into space.
“We are pleased to release the first GeoEye-1 image, bringing us even closer to the start of the satellite’s commercial operations and sales to our customers,” said GeoEye chief executive Matthew O’Connell.
GeoEye intends to start selling images from GeoEye-1 later this year, it said.
Although the spacecraft can collect images at a resolution of up to .41 meters — close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye’s vice president of communications and marketing. But we can sell only images that show details at .5 meters because of U.S. government restrictions, he said.
“This image captures what is in fact the very first location the satellite saw when we opened the camera door and started imaging,” said Peterson, in a statement.
“This is the opposite of a spy satellite,” Brender said in a phone interview. “Spies do not put info on the internet and sell imagery. We are an Earth-imaging satellite, and we can sell our imagery to customers around the world who have a need to map and measure and monitor things on the ground.”
But, due to national security concerns, GeoEye-1’s government clients will receive higher resolution photos than commercial clients such as Google, which plans to use the images on its popular Google Maps and Google Earth programs.
The satellite imagery from GeoEye-1 will be of a higher resolution and better quality than what is currently available on Google Maps and Google Earth.
Rick Turoczy, a blogger at Read Write Web, noted that while Google Maps and Google Earth have changed the way people interact with geography; their approaches to detailed views of the world have always been “a bit fuzzy and squint-inducing.”
“With access to the GeoEye-1 imagery, Google can now begin providing images for Google Maps and Google Earth that will boast a resolution of 50 cm,” he added. “That is just shy of two feet. When this new high-resolution imagery becomes available, Google Maps sightseeing will get a great deal more interesting.”
“We are commercializing a technology that was once only in the hands of the governments,” Brender said. “Just like the internet, just like GPS, just like telecom — all invented by the government. And now we are on the front end of the spear that is commercializing this technology.”
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is a space buff and has booked a seat on a flight to the International Space Station with the company Space Adventures, which plans to take space tourists to the orbiting space station beginning in 2011.
A second satellite, GeoEye-2, slated to launch in 2011 or 2012, will have a resolution of 25 cm, company representatives promised.