GeoEye Releases First Half-Meter Satellite Image
Kutztown University, midway between Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, has never looked so good. Or at least not like this. The University campus was featured in the first publicly released half-meter, color satellite image produced by the GeoEye-1 satellite, launched on September 6.
“We do find the initial target selection amusing,” the author of the intelligence blog Kent’s Imperative wrote today, “and we are sure that there is a backstory there somewhere waiting to be told. There is something about small, out of the way Pennsylvania colleges and the intelligence community, isn’t there?”
There may be, but “This image captures what is in fact the very first location the satellite saw when we opened the camera door and started imaging,” said Brad Peterson, GeoEye vice president of operations.
The GeoEye-1 satellite will provide imagery for national intelligence agencies and, beginning later this fall, for commercial sale.
“Though the satellite collects imagery at 0.41-meter ground resolution, due to U.S. licensing restrictions, commercial customers will only get access to imagery that has been processed to half-meter ground resolution,” according to an October 8 GeoEye news release.
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