Astrium to Provide Satellite Imagery for Google Maps and Google Earth

September 13, 2013  - By
Image: GPS World
Image: GPS World

Astrium announced that it has entered into an agreement with Google Inc. to provide satellite imagery in support of Google Maps, Google Earth and other Google products and services. Under this agreement, Astrium Services will provide newly acquired imagery from its Pléiades and SPOT satellites.

According to the announcement, Pléiades 1A and 1B are Europe’s first very high-resolution Earth-observation satellites, offering exceptional performance to support both commercial and government markets with 50cm resolution imagery products. The SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 constellation, operated in conjunction with Pléiades, offers 1.5m resolution imagery products and is uniquely capable of mapping continent-wide areas.

Astrium reports that their four-satellite constellation makes Astrium Services the first satellite operator in the world to offer a complete range of Earth-observation data at different resolutions (from medium to very high-resolution), an image collection capacity of up to 6.5 million square kilometers each day and the ability to image every point of the globe on a daily basis.

This is posted in GIS News, Imagery, Mapping, Technology

About the Author: Eric Gakstatter

Eric Gakstatter has been involved in the GPS/GNSS industry for more than 20 years. For 10 years, he held several product management positions in the GPS/GNSS industry, managing the development of several medium- and high-precision GNSS products along with associated data-collection and post-processing software. Since 2000, he's been a power user of GPS/GNSS technology as well as consulted with capital management companies; federal, state and local government agencies; and private companies on the application and/or development of GPS technology. Since 2006, he's been a contributor to GPS World magazine, serving as editor of the monthly Survey Scene newsletter until 2015, and as editor of Geospatial Solutions monthly newsletter for GPS World's sister site Geospatial Solutions, which focuses on GIS and geospatial technologies.