WASHINGTON -- The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded licenses to two commercial remote-sensing companies for satellites with half-meter (half-yard) resolution.
NOAA, which licenses the operation of remote-sensing satellites for the U.S. Department of Commerce, awarded the licenses to two Colorado firms -- Space Imaging in Thornton and EarthWatch Inc. in Longmont, spokesmen for the two companies said Dec. 18.
Half-meter resolution means the satellites can record images with enough resolution to make it possible to identify objects as small as a half-meter across.
Space Imaging, which already operates the 1-meter Ikonos satellite, plans to launch its half-meter spacecraft by 2004, company officials have said.
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EarthWatch has not set any details for its half-meter satellite, according to spokesman Chuck Herring.
EarthWatch
recently lost its QuickBird 1 -- a 1-meter remote sensing satellite -- in a launch failure in November. EarthWatch is focusing its resources on the launch of QuickBird 2, another 1-meter remote-sensing spacecraft, planned for mid 2001, Herring said.
There also is a possibility that the ground resolution of QuickBird 2 could be increased from 1-meter to a half-meter, Herring said.
"There are no plans to change anything at this time, but we are looking at every alternative right now," Herring said.
If QuickBird 2 were converted to half-meter resolution, the satellite would have to be flown at a lower orbit than for 1-meter operations, which would shorten the life of the spacecraft, Herring said.
The half-meter licenses contain a provision that calls for a 24-hour delay from collection of an image to distribution to a customer, an industry source said. The only exception is for images collected for the U.S. government.
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