ICEYE small satellites see the world in higher resolution

An in-orbit demonstration from ICEYE radar imaging satellites has shown off the new capability, which addresses the “Earth observation market”.

The example image above is a compressed preview of ICEYE radar satellite imagery, originally acquired at 25 cm resolution, showing oil tanks in Rotterdam.

“Before, these resolutions have been exclusively reserved for the larger, traditional SAR spacecraft,” said Pekka Laurila, CSO & Co-founder of ICEYE.

“This resolution is operationally expected to be available for ICEYE customers already mid-2020 from the current in-orbit constellation.”

According to the company – following standard industry definitions – the native slant plane resolution of the SAR data is 25 cm in the azimuth direction, and 50 cm in the range direction, before ground-plane adjustments are applied.

The data will be accessible with standard Geographic Information System (GIS) tools, it says.

Object classification

“Site activity monitoring based on very high resolution SAR data enables our customers to unlock new insights in virtually all use cases that utilize ICEYE’s current 1-meter resolution imaging.”, said Dr. Mark Matossian, CEO of the US subsidiary of ICEYE.

“25 cm resolution SAR imaging is ground-breaking to come from the world’s smallest SAR satellites. Commercial and government SAR customers will be able to achieve very detailed change detection, perform improved object classification, and track ever smaller objects from orbit.”

ICEYE-X1

ICEYE launched its first SAR satellite, ICEYE-X1, in January 2018. It achieved 10×10 meter resolution data capabilities, while weighing under 100 kilograms (220 pounds) in launch mass.

Its current commercial SAR satellite constellation consists of three spacecraft.