If the vigilant eye of Google has been watching you with Street View, you are going to love this. Now Google is getting a new eye in the sky – Search giant Google has signed a deal with Dulles, Va. startup GeoEye to provide enhanced imagery for its Maps and Earth applications via the GeoEye’s highest ground resolution color imagery available in the commercial marketplace after it launches in September of this year.
GeoEye will be launching a new satellite with the highest resolution available on the market in the next few days to provide detailed imagery, making it and exclusive online mapping site to use the satellite’s photos.
Under the deal, Google becomes the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery, said Mark Brender, vice president of corporate communications and marketing.
And as a bonus, Google is grabbing the opportunity by fixing its rainbow-colored logo to take a ride on the rocket that launches the satellite. Google has been using GeoEye among other providers to this point, and will continue to do so. However, none have ever contributed any imagery this sophisticated. (The logo will not actually go into space, but instead will drop to Earth with the rocket’s first stage.)
The “GeoEye-1,” which weighs in at 4,300 pounds, is ready to launch next week from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The GeoEye-1 will orbit 423 miles above Earth, but will be able to gather imagery with details the size of 41 centimeters, Brender said. Interestingly enough, Google is only permitted to use data with a resolution of 50cm because of the terms of GeoEye’s license with the U.S. government.
Each day, the satellite will be able to gather a high-resolution “pan-sharpened” format surface area equal to that of about New Mexico, the company said.
“The GeoEye-1 satellite has the highest ground resolution color imagery available in the commercial marketplace and will produce high-quality imagery with a very accurate geolocation,” said Google spokeswoman Kate Hurowitz, adding that most commercial satellite imagery has a resolution of 60cm. “It is our goal to display high-resolution imagery for as much of the world as possible, and GeoEye-1 will help further that goal.”
However, Google is not dealing for first time with GeoEye. It already uses images from its IKONOS satellite, as well as from other sources including DigitalGlobe. As part of the new deal, GeoEye would exclusively provide its imagery to Google.
Google does not have any direct or indirect financial interest in the satellite or in GeoEye and, according to the two companies; Google did not pay any fee for its logo to appear on the rocket. It appears the Google logo is only on the rocket in recognition of its support for the project.
GeoEye says it hopes to launch the rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on September 4. If all goes well, it should be in its proper orbit within an hour-and-a-half of launch.
Imagery will be received by Google beginning in late October or early November, although it is not clear how long it will take for the images to begin to appear on Google Maps. Imagery could conceivably be available at as high as 0.41 meters in black and white, and 1.65 meters in color.
ITT built the imaging subsystem, and General Dynamics built the overall satellite, Brender said. GeoEye also contracted with ITT for the imaging in the GeoEye-2 satellite, due to launch in 2011 or 2012, Brender said. According to ITT, that satellite will have a resolution of 25cm, or about 9.75 inches.
Google’s current imagery in Google Earth spans a range of resolution, the coarsest being 15 square meters per pixel, which is only good enough to see larger geographic features.
It is already fun to explore the satellite view in Maps, and detail appears to be very impressive when zoomed far in, but some areas do seem to have not been updated in a long time. With the faster imaging speeds and more detail provided by these new satellites, updates should be pouring in much faster- especially in rural areas.
Unfortunately for those apprehensive about privacy, this indicates they will be able to get clearer images from closer distances. Of course, they can still see closer.
So how fine-grained is that? An Italian research project three years ago to study whether it was possible to distinguish certain types of automobiles that travel around the city of Baghdad from satellite imagery alone used pictures that had 0.68 meters resolution. And under federal law, only images with as high as 0.5 meters resolution can be used commercially.
“The satellite is worth about $502 million, though the financial transaction between Google and GeoEye is unclear.”