In Five days (Sept. 4 2008), if nothing wrong happens, New Google Earth Satelitte will launch this week. This satellite named GeoEye-1.
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. With this new satellite Google Earth capable up to 1,65 meter resolution. However 3 meters resolution will mostly more suitable in cost of bandwidth arround the world.
Google Earth will start collecting new image with bigger resolution from new satelitte after few month from launch date due technical and legal matters.
After a lengthy U.S. Government interagency review, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) notified commercial imagery providers that the 24-hour hold rule that was required for imagery at a resolution better than .82-meter is no longer in place. On June 29, 2007, GeoEye’s commercial remote sensing license was modified to reflect this change. This means that when GeoEye-1 launches in September 2008, GeoEye will be able to sell imagery as soon as possible after it has been captured.
Besides the unrivaled spatial resolution of 0.41-meters or about 16 inches, GeoEye-1 is designed to have three-meter accuracy, which means that customers can map natural and man-made features to within three meters of their actual locations on the surface of the Earth without ground control points. This level of accuracy is unsurpassed. At 0.41-meter resolution, GeoEye-1 would be able to 'see' home plate on a baseball diamond and be able to precisely locate it within three meters of its true location on the surface of the globe. As far as imagery collection, in the panchromatic mode (black and white mode) the satellite will be capable of collecting up to 700,000 square kilometers in a single day and in the multispectral mode (colour mode) 350,000 square kilometers per day. Spatial resolution, geolocation accuracy and large-area coverage are the three specifications that commercial and government customers desire most.
___________________________________________________________________
