INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: SPOT Image Corp.
GIF 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 1 (February)
President and Chief Executive Officer
SPOT Image Corp.
A: SPOT Image has a satellite launch plan that will put four new earth observation satellites into space over the next four years. These satellites will enable us to provide uninterrupted, high quality imagery and services to the military and intelligence communities well into the next decade.
Scheduled to launch this fall is the very high resolution Pléiades 1 satellite. It will be followed by its identical twin, Pléiades 2, as soon as nine months later. The Pléiades constellation will work together to provide standard 50-centimenter, orthorectified products, daily revisit capabilities, the largest collection swath available in the market today and unprecedented access to very high resolution imagery for government and commercial customers alike. The delivery mechanism for Pléiades data will enable the delivery of fully orthorectified imagery, within hours of acquisition on a global basis. Pléiades 1 and 2 will also work as the perfect complement to SPOT 6 and 7, to be launched in 2012 and 2013. This new high resolution satellite constellation will serve as the SPOT 5 continuity mission with the same 60-kilometer swath and improved 2-meter resolution.
In respect to the use of these satellites by the U.S. Department of Defense, the high resolution satellites cover a very wide swath, enabling them to portray a much larger picture of the situation on the ground, while the very high resolution satellites provide greater detail and pinpoint accuracy. The full constellation will operate simultaneously to provide monitoring of large areas and very tight coverage over small areas at the same time, thereby giving users the best capability for surveillance, situational awareness and analyst interpretation in near real-time.
Q: What are some of SPOT Image’s other products and services of special interest to the military and intelligence communities?
A: Our customers tell us what is really important to them is speed of delivery and the ability to integrate imagery information into both their systems and decisionmaking process as quickly and efficiently as possible. From setting up ground telemetry stations to allow for the instant—within minutes of acquisition—ability to distribute data directly to the end-user, to simply providing imagery in GIS-ready format via multiple delivery mechanisms, we have kept this need in mind during the development of each product and service we deliver.
A service we are very enthusiastic about is our new site monitoring service. We are working with highly trained image analysts to provide monitoring and analysis of targeted sites via a private and secure online service. Clients indicate their area of interest, choose daily, weekly or monthly monitoring, and then receive e-mail alerts and detailed change analysis reports any time a change has been detected. These reports can then be used to make a decision as to whether or not to put more resources into looking at that particular mission area. We call this our SPOTMonitoring service, and it has drawn a lot of interest from the defense and intelligence community as an efficient and cost-effective solution for monitoring lower priority targets. We first demonstrated this service at GEOINT Symposium 2009, and we will be providing demos of this service at a few more events this year, including the upcoming International Commercial Remote Sensing Symposium in March.
Also based on customer input, we continue to expand our SPOTMaps inventory of mission-ready, 2.5 meter, orthorectified basemaps. SPOTMaps of over 80 countries are currently available off the shelf and ready for publishing in most GIS systems. These products are created from SPOT 5 imagery and orthorectified using our highly accurate georeference database, Reference3-D. They provide coverage of entire countries and regions to be used as basemaps for many mission planning activities. SPOTMaps have also been used very successfully in flight simulation and other visual 3-D simulation programs, and are now available through a subscription service.
Q: What unique benefits does your SPOTMaps Subscription Service offer users?
A: The subscription service was created to enable users to subscribe to SPOTMaps of their country or region of interest for a fraction of the purchase price, and to allow for imagery updates on an annual basis, so the basemaps stay fresh and current. To meet the requirements of the individual COCOMs, we have also consolidated many countries into regional basemaps to cover the specific regions of interest for AFRICOM, CENTCOM, SOUTHCOM, NORTHCOM and PACOM. It’s about providing situational awareness on the ground by providing a fresh, high quality, large area basemap in the most efficient way possible.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: SPOT Image is excited to enter the very high resolution satellite market with the launch of the Pléiades constellation. We know we are not the first to have this technology and that we are entering a market already dominated by U.S. imagery providers with a lot to offer, but we know we can make a difference with our services, extensive worldwide network and the way we do business. Pléiades 1 and 2 may offer benefits that you don’t already have with the other sub-meter satellites and aerial systems, but they may also work to complement these resources. Innovation, not just superstar satellites and improved imagery, will drive the development of the new products and services needed to meet the evolving requirements of our customers. We look forward to all the challenges that lie ahead. ♦