UP42 has signed an agreement with HEAD Aerospace of Beijing to make image data from more than 40 innovative Chinese Earth observation satellites available on the UP42 marketplace. The broad selection of imaging capabilities from the constellations dramatically expands the range of applications in multiple sectors, with the most significant benefits expected in infrastructure, transportation, utilities, agriculture, government.
The UP42 marketplace currently contains more than 50 geospatial data sets, including satellite imagery from six international organizations. The newly added satellites' diverse and often unique imaging capabilities include wide-swath imaging at very high resolution, nighttime acquisitions, frequent intraday revisits, tri-stereo collection, and hyperspectral imaging.
“This partnership is an important milestone for us as a company but, more importantly, for our customers. By diversifying our data sets, we are unlocking a broader spectrum of use cases for our users in multiple sectors. This is the true meaning of ‘democratizing access to Earth insights’,” said UP42 CEO Sean Wiid.
HEAD Aerospace is the international distributor of satellite imagery collected by commercial Earth Observation missions. The UP42-HEAD agreement includes imagery from multiple constellations, including SuperView, Earthscanner, Gaofen-7, DailyVision, NightVision, Hyperscan, and Tri-Stereo ZY3. These seven constellations will total more than 80 satellites by the end of 2021.
“Sharing a similar approach facilitating users' easy access to an agnostic data source by a centralized portal with a wide choice of satellite attributes, we are glad to have partnered with UP42. This partnership represents another new milestone for us in expanding our global network.” said Kammy Brun, Managing Director of HEAD Aerospace.
While each satellite constellation was designed with one or more imaging specialties, a remarkable variety of operational capabilities are shared across the constellations to support numerous applications and industries. Notable examples include:
Large-area very high-resolution mapping – Planning and monitoring critical infrastructure, including utility transmission grids and transportation networks, can be performed for entire states, countries, and regions. Up to 40,000 square kilometers can be covered with wide-swath (136km) imagery captured at a half-meter spatial resolution on a single pass.
Intraday and early morning monitoring – The EarlyEye tasking product leverages multiple HEAD Aerospace constellations to deliver early morning, frequent images, an hour earlier than usual commercial offer at 10:30. Designed for frequent monitoring of critical assets and rapidly changing situations related to energy security, defense/intelligence, and infrastructure management, a high-resolution revisit schedule of four times per day is currently possible, with 15-minute revisit between 09:00 and 13:30 anywhere on Earth to be possible by the end of 2021.
High vertical accuracy mapping – Multiple satellites perform stereo imaging at high resolution for high-quality land use and cadastral mapping. One constellation captures single-pass tri-stereo imagery validated with onboard laser altimetry data, generating digital elevation models (DEMs), digital terrain models (DTMs), and other large-scale 3D mapping products with vertical accuracy of five meters. Additionally, the SuperView constellation captures daily stereo imagery with vertical accuracy of better than two metres.
Hyperspectral imaging – Imaging in 25 spectral bands spanning the visible, near-infrared, and mid-infrared portions of the spectrum is ideal for regional natural resource management: detecting crop stress and planning pesticide/fertilizer applications, species mapping of forests and vegetative land cover, and protecting environmentally sensitive areas. These data sets can also be used in agriculture monitoring, mineral exploration, and water quality monitoring.
Nighttime imaging – Monitoring and surveillance activities by government entities, energy utilities, and security organizations can be carried out around the clock with true-color, high-resolution at 1m optical and video imaging during daylight and dark of night. Nighttime collection is ideal for surveillance such as illegal camping, border surveillance, change detection, especially in rapidly evolving events, powerline incidents, and designing streetlight placement in urban settings. Day and night video can detect vehicle and ship movement.
UP42 users have an ever-growing selection of satellite imagery to choose from on the geospatial marketplace. UP42 technical experts are available to assist customers in selecting the best data set to meet the needs of specific end-use applications in all industries and sectors. These experts can also help in tasking a satellite for new image acquisition or querying the archive to obtain existing imagery.