Launched and operated by CG Satellite, meet Jilin-1, the only world’s only high-resolution satellite constellation collecting color nighttime imagery. Offered at 92-centimeter (cm) resolution, nighttime imagery from Jilin-1 is the ideal solution for a plethora of problems only now solvable by this satellite constellation, including:



These 92-cm color Jilin-1 nighttime images come courtesy of CG Satellite.
  • Light pollution studies
  • Population estimates
  • Detection of burnt out street and building lights
  • Measurement of short-term disturbances in power delivery caused by natural disasters
  • Monitoring of illegal nighttime fishing
  • Modeling of anthropogenic carbon emissions

In this series focused on 92-cm nighttime satellite imagery from Jilin-1, we feature new samples as they become available to us, as well nighttime data is pretty amazing! In the last edition of this sporadic series we were in Paris, and for the December edition we stay in Europe with a quick jaunt south to Seville, Spain. And what makes this sample extra special is that it was collected by one of three new nighttime Jilin-1 satellites, GF03C, launched in September 2020–in fact this is the first sample we have seen from the three new birds! This 92-cm Jilin-1 sample was collected on September 30th and in these three nighttime images we are particularly impressed with the new satellite’s ability to resolve patterns of small lights.

Jilin-1 Nighttime Archive Data in Image Hunter!

Did you hear the news that we added the 92-cm Jilin-1 nighttime imagery (and video) archive to Image Hunter?! Well if not, now you did–get your free search started right away

Jilin-1 Nighttime Imagery Specifications Summary

If you are new to 92-cm color, nighttime Jilin-1 satellite imagery, here is a summary of its key specifications:

  • Imagery Resolution – 92-cm (at nadir), imagery delivered at native ground sampling distance (GSD)
  • Spectral Bands – blue, green and red
  • Approximate Equatorial Nighttime Imaging Time – 22:30 local time, Video 3/7/8; 0:00 local time, Video 4/5/6
  • Average Revisit Frequency – 7 to 9 days, varies by off-nadir and latitude
  • Dynamic Range – 8-bits
  • Footprint Dimensions – 11 kilometers (km) x 4.5 km, Video 3 satellite; 19 km x 4.5 km, Video 4/5/6/7/8 satellites
  • Imaging Blackout Dates – varies by maximum North or South latitude, feasibility available with submission of project polygon

If you are interested in samples of Jilin-1 or additional specifications, you can check out our website here; and you can also search for archived nighttime imagery at any time on Image Hunter. And if you would like a price list that includes Jilin-1 nighttime imagery pricing or need help pricing out a specific project, send us an email anytime at sales@apollomapping.com

Cricket’s Chirp is created for Apollo Mapping by Ron Ruelle, a Boulder, Colorado based cartoonist, lllustrator and teacher. No animals are harmed in the creation of these comics, but Ron sometimes breaks a pencil in frustration. You can see more of his work at www.ronruelle.com

Space-X successfully launched its first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on November 15, 2020. On board was Crew-1 which included Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, and NASA astronauts, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins. Along with the new crew came a payload full of fascinating experiments focused on space exploration and the human body. Space programs are looking to the future, and their experiments are focused on the multi-faceted goal of colonizing the Moon and Mars.

Watch the successful launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Crew-1 onboard.

Building habitats and long-term living in space is going to take ingenuity and working with readily available resources. BioAsteroid will study how rocks and microbes are affected by gravity in a liquid medium. In microgravity, researchers can test their theories with two microbial species: Phingomonas desiccabilis and Penicillium simplicissimum. The results from the study will go a long way to forming processes for biomining and using regolith for life support systems.

Astronauts will even get the chance to SERFE in space, or more accurately, to perform the SERFE (Spacesuit Evaporation Rejection Flight Experiment) on NASA’s new spacesuit called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). The xEMU design uses water evaporation to remove heat inside the suit and to keep astronauts at a safe temperature. They’ll test the suit and the Spacesuit Water Membrane Evaporator on 25 simulated spacewalks, each eight hours long. It sounds exhausting, but it’s necessary before they take it out on a real spacewalk.

Growing food in the inhospitable environment of space is an obvious and trying challenge. NASA has been adding modules to grow plants for many years and now they are expanding again. The Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) was added to the ISS in 2018 to study which growth conditions plants prefer. It provides a larger root and shoot area than previous experiments and has been used to study the cabbage-like Arabidopsis and Dwarf Wheat. Chosen for its similarities to Arabidopsis and its nutritional value, the Crew-1 brought radish seeds onboard to test in the APH. It’s looking like future astronauts better get used to eating radishes and cabbage.

See the enhancements in NASA’s new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). (Credit: NASA)

There are also many on-going experiments the new astronauts will work on, including the Food Physiology experiment, which is the shortened name for the Integrated Impact of Diet on Human Immune Response, the Gut Microbiota, and Nutritional Status During Adaptation to Spaceflight. Thank goodness they didn’t turn it into an acronym.

Our stomachs are a mystery to us at the best of times, microgravity and a foreign environment complicate an already complex issue. The most direct and measurable way to deal with an astronaut’s overall health and immune system is through their diet. Monitoring changes in astronauts as their diet changes over time helps researchers improve the astronauts’ health. They are comparing the current diet with an enhanced version that includes foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, lycopene and flavonoids. All of these experiments will help current and future astronauts thrive in space as well as enhance the lives of everyone else on Earth. Important science is undertaken everyday onboard the ISS and we all reap the benefits.

The October 2020 temperature departure map show lots of record warmth centered over the Middle East, northern South America and south Asia. A marked pocket of cool weather hoovered over central North America.
  • I bet you are shocked to find out that for the 430th month in a row it was really hot on our planet? Well put that shocked face away as according to the NOAA Global Climate Report, October 2020 was the fourth hottest on record with the seven hottest Octobers all occurring in the past seven years. Some 6.8% of the world saw record warmth in the month. But at least some sanity could be restored here in the USA as we’ll have an administration in January that is willing to move on Climate Change reform, finally.
  • December 1st is World AIDS Day and so our Google search of the month was, “AIDS and GIS.” In the multitude of results, you might find this research by Yao et al. who use GIS to assess the spatial distribution of AIDS testing in Mozambique. And their results could surprise you (or perhaps not) a bit as access to AIDS testing was less an issue of spatial distribution and more about a citizen’s maximum educational achievement.

Brock Adam McCarty
Map Wizard
(720) 470-7988
brock@apollomapping.com

Geographic information is consumed, edited and viewed in a myriad of ways. Many GIS professionals prefer to use software like ArcGIS, GRASS and QGIS. Others prefer Google Earth to easily share geographic files with clients and colleagues without the need for complex GIS software; while GeoJSON (JSON) is the preferred open format for simple features. Moving these data files between software systems can be difficult, especially with proprietary formats. Enter our 100% free online tool, kmz2shp.com, which solves this problem!

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Have you searched for medium-resolution satellite imagery in Image Hunter recently? If so, you have surely seen lots of imagery from the 3-meter (m) satellite constellation, PlanetScope. As one of our most ubiquitous medium-resolution options, PlanetScope is actually 150 micro-satellites (and counting!) that compile a gigantic archive of imagery spanning nearly the entire globe daily. In addition, PlanetScope 3-m multispectral imagery is not pansharpened, this is the native resolution; making it comparable to the ‘high-resolution’ multispectral imagery collected by Deimos-2 or KOMPSAT-3, for example.

A 3-m color PlanetScope image collected over New York City, New York on June 20, 2017. This image has been processed by Apollo Mapping for improved colors and clarity. (Image Copyright: Planet, 2017)

With so many satellites available in our archive of imagery, you may be wondering: “What are the key benefits of PlanetScope data?” Great question! For one, PlanetScope and its 150+ fleet of Dove microsats can make daily revisits to nearly any location. On top of that, the combined collection capacity is at least 200 hundred million square kilometers (sq km) per day! This means tons of medium-resolution imagery collected over sites that other satellites may have missed, making PlanetScope a great choice for projects involving narrow timeframes and/or monitoring.

But that’s not all! Perhaps the most impressive feature of PlanetScope is not the huge collection capacity or daily revisits, but its price. At $1.80 per sq km and a 250 sq km minimum order size, PlanetScope is hard to beat if budget is a driving factor of your project.

We know that imagery needs can change at any moment and from project to project. If you’d like to learn more about our pricing options and other available satellites, ask us for our latest imagery price list by emailing sales@apollomapping.com.

PlanetScope Key Specifications Summary:

  • Launch Date: multiple clustered Dove microsat launches since 2016
  • Sensor Resolution: At-nadir–3-m four and five-band multispectral (International Space Station orbit); 3.7 m (sun synchronous orbit)

DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS?! 5-band PlanetScope imagery collected by SuperDoves with new red-edge data is now available and searchable on Image Hunter! Read more about this exciting announcement here.

For more information about four and five-band 3-meter PlanetScope imagery, you can check out our website here or send us an email at sales@apollomapping.com and we will gladly help price out your next medium-resolution imagery product!

During October we checked out the site of a hotly-contested mid-season National Football League matchup, and for this edition of the Pléiades 1–SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month we travel across the pond to the UK with a look at the site of a key Premier League football match, Anfield, in the suburbs of Liverpool.

About the Stadium: The historic stadium, Anfield, is located in the northwest suburb of Liverpool with its same name; and is about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from both the Atlantic Ocean and the River Mersey, which divides the metro region into two halves. The stadium opened in 1884 and was the home field of Everton F.C. until 1892 when that club moved to Goodison Park. After the move, a new football (or soccer for our US readers) team was formed, Liverpool F.C., and it has called Anfield home ever since. Originally opened with some 8,000 seats, the stadium has seen many rounds of improvements, bringing the current capacity to just over 54,000 fans–which is the seventh largest stadium in England. There are plans in the work to expand Anfield once again to about 61,000 seats but those plans have been delayed by the ongoing global COVID crisis. In 2017, the pitch at Anfield was replaced with a 97% Dwarf Perennial Ryegrass natural field interwoven with some 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) of artificial turf fibers.


A 50-cm color image of Anfield in Anfield, United Kingdom collected on September 12, 2020 by Pléiades 1A; and then a 1.5-m SPOT 6 image of the same stadium collected on May 28, 2020. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLEIADES © CNES 2020, Distribution Airbus DS. SPOT © Airbus DS 2020.

Fun Factoids: (1) Anfield will host a December 16th match between Liverpool and the Tottenham Spurs, both in the top quarter of the current Premier League standings. But unlike the USA where many sporting events are allowing fans to return to the stands, all Premier League matches will be played in front of empty stands as the COVID crisis spikes around the globe during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter. We wonder if American sports team will be forced to follow suit if our own COVID case count continues to soar? (2) While Liverpool F.C. is one of the Premier League’s most popular teams, only 100 or so fans showed up for its first match. (3) Anfield’s grass-turf hybrid field features more than 20 million turf fibers and some 19 miles of underground piping to keep the field heated during the UK’s cold winters. (4) Anfield is used to host a variety of sporting events outside of football, including multiple rugby tournaments and even boxing matches during the 1930s. Most recently, music concerts returned to Anfield in 2019, with Bon Jovi headlining the summer series, though the COVID crisis has seen all 2020 and likely many 2021 concerts canceled.

The Pléiades 1 High-Resolution Satellite Constellation

The Pléiades 1 constellation (or at least part of it!) has been in orbit since December 2011 and if you have not had a chance to check out any sample imagery, take a few moments and have a look at the gallery on our website. If you work with high-resolution imagery, you should consider Pléiades 1 for your next geospatial project.

A variety of Pléiades 1 products are available from both a growing archive and as a new collection, including 50-centimeter (cm) pansharpened imagery and 50-cm panchromatic–2-meter (m) 4-band multispectral bundles. We are happy to discuss the technical specifications, pricing and tasking options available with this satellite constellation.

The SPOT Medium-Resolution Satellite Constellation

The SPOT medium-resolution constellation consist of seven satellites launched from 1986 to 2014 with the most recent additions, SPOT 6 and SPOT 7, launching in 2012 and 2014 respectively. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 are twin satellites offering 1.5-m panchromatic and 6-m 4-band multispectral data with a massive footprint at 60-kilometers (km) wide. For projects requiring recent archive coverage or rapid new collections of medium-resolution data, SPOT 6/7 should be one of your top imagery sources!

More sample images and technical information about Pléiades 1A and 1B can be found on our website here; while the same can be found here for the SPOT constellation and specifically about SPOT 6/7.

The Apollo Mapping sales team can answer any questions you might have about Pléiades 1 and/or any of the SPOT satellites. We can be reached at (303) 993-3863 or sales@apollomapping.com.

In this month’s Reaching Orbit, we discussed the new experiments onboard the International Space Station (ISS). One of the most interesting experiments that’s worth digging into involves human tissue. Sounds creepy and it’s probably a bit creepy too, like zombies in space.

Studying cardiac tissue and cells in space will help us improve treatments for heart disease and aging on Earth. (Credit: Robina Weermeijer)

Tissue Chips in Space is a futuristic experiment torn from the pages of science fiction novels. The experiment uses human cells to create a facsimile of a human organ on a thumb-sized 3D matrix. Researchers are studying how space habitation affects human cells, from the drugs they take to genetic changes and stresses on the body. While it has implications for improving spaceflight, it’s also applicable to human health and disease back on Earth. The technology in the tissue chips is remarkable. After advancements in tissue engineering and microfabrication in 2016, the National Center for Advancing Translation Sciences (NCATS) and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) collaborated and offered funding to develop and test tissue chips on the ISS. By scaling down the organs to bite sizes, research is far more efficient and can be performed on a larger scale in a cramped environment like the ISS.

Many of the microgravity side effects look like our natural aging process, such as bone loss, immune deficiency, muscle deterioration, and heart complications, which are largely reversed when an astronaut returns to Earth. Researchers want to slow the aging process, again a hallmark of many science fiction novels, by identifying molecular targets. In a related study called Cardinal Heart, researchers will use engineered heart tissues and tissue chips to study three different stem cells. The tissue chips will be exposed to microgravity then returned to Earth for further study. Scientists will know the exact condition of the cells before entering microgravity then track the changes to help isolate the negative effects of gravity and thus to better inform treatments for astronauts and people on Earth. Researchers hope to isolate gene expression changes in each cell and their interactions with other cells.

Scientists will be looking at cellular and tissue level changes that often lead to heart disease or weakening of the heart’s muscles. Novel targets for therapeutic intervention are their main goal, but they also want to identify early changes in cardiac tissue that could lead to long-term damage. Advancements in tissue chip technology has wide ranging implications for studying diseased and healthy hearts, their changes over time and in various conditions.