satellite imagery

Aw, shucks: imaging company GeoEye could not capture a super high-resolution image of Obama's inauguration today from space.

Using its GeoEye-1 and IKONOS satellites positioned 423 miles above the Earth, the company tried and failed -- due to clouds -- on two separate attempts to capture the image of the inauguration, a GeoEye representative told CNET. GeoEye planned to release an interactive map of the ceremony with a built-in zoom and a slider that would have let the user compare this year's image to the one captured four years ago. Feel free to zoom around in the 2009 Inauguration image embedded below.… Read more

If you're looking for a bit of an escape on a Friday afternoon, you can probably get away with it thanks to some more updates to Google Maps and Earth.

Google announced today that it's rolling out an "extensive refresh" for its high-resolution aerial and satellite images, which are viewable on both Google Maps and Google Earth.

The aerial collection will be updated in more than 20 locations across the United States and Europe while satellite imagery is being boosted in over 60 regions worldwide.

Furthermore, the image collection is going to include new 45 degree … Read more

Talk about being in eye of the storm. This shirt from Due Fashion sports satellite imagery of a hurricane. Yes, you can wear Hurricane Rick right on your chest.

The printed T-shirt is part of the U.K. company's first collection, called Earth Tops. The line of cotton/polyester tops features dashing digital aerial imagery of weather patterns and geographical terrain like the Sahara desert and Russian Kamchatka Peninsula. … Read more

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an arm of the U.S. government that oversees satellite imagery collection for military and intelligence work, has awarded two satellite imagery companies contracts worth more than $3 billion each.

The two 10-year contracts are part of a program called EnhancedView to produce a new generation of satellite imagery. GeoEye, based in Dulles, Va., was awarded $3.8 billion, and DigitalGlobe, based in Longmont, Colo., was awarded $3.55 billion.

Each contract is paid annually, subject to congressional approval, and can be canceled annually. The long-term funding paves the way for development of next-generation satellites with … Read more

Google.org demonstrated a new platform on Thursday that, if implemented in conjunction with a proposed United Nations program, could provide a significant tool to combat climate change.

Its new "high-performance satellite imagery-processing engine" can process terabytes of information on thousands of Google servers while giving access to the results online.

The platform, which was demonstrated on Thursday at the International Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, would allow anyone using the tool to monitor whether or not trees were being chopped down in a given forest. It analyzes satellite images to show forest changes over a given time … Read more

Twelve days after it launched WorldView-2 into orbit, DigitalGlobe has released its first images from the satellite, which will supply high-resolution photography for Google's and Microsoft's online mapping services.

The first images are of two locations in San Antonio, Texas, where the company is showing off its work at the GeoInt 2009 Symposium this week, and of Dallas Love Airport.

The quality of the images should improve over these first shots, taken Monday. "More refinements to early-stage images can be expected as the ongoing check-out and calibration continues," DigitaGlobe said.

Microsoft and Nokia sponsored the WorldView-2 launch, … Read more

In 2008, Google got its logo on the rocket launching the GeoEye-1 satellite for collecting space-based imagery. This year, it's Microsoft's turn.

The Bing logo appeared on the side of a Boeing Delta II 7920 rocket that launched DigitalGlobe's new WorldView-2 satellite last week from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But where Google got sole online rights to the GeoEye-1 imagery, Microsoft will be sharing access to WorldView-2 images with Google, a Digital Globe representative said.

Another sponsor of the rocket is Nokia, whose Navteq subsidiary also supplies digital maps.

Bing today offers aerial and satellite … Read more

Ever been out on patrol and had a sudden urge for chapli kabobs with a side of bendai?

That's the sort of mix-and-match experience that could be addressed through a new deal between DARPA and Geosemble Technologies, which makes a product called GeoXray that aims to quickly answer the question "What's around here?" for both government agencies and civilian users. In a nutshell, it works this way: you can peruse dining options or identify enemy assembly areas simply by clicking on aerial images of your area of operations.

GeoXray uses artificial intelligence to assign textual keywords … Read more

The GeoEye-1 satellite that launched into orbit Saturday is on a mission from Google.

Well, not just Google. The GeoEye-1 is part of the NextView program of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a dot-mil organization that, odd as it may seem, wants access to commercial satellite imagery to support its national security mission. GeoEye, the company, won its $500 million NextView contract four years ago.

But the search titan does have the exclusive rights among online mapping sites to the GeoEye-1 images, which it will use in its Google Earth and Google Maps offerings. It even got its corporate … Read more