The Last IKONOS Image – Southeastern Australia

A sample from the last cloud-free image IKONOS collected over Ryans Crossing, Australia on December 20, 2014. This 80-cm color image has custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. (Image Credit: DigitalGlobe)

As many of our readers know, the longest life span high-resolution satellite ever launched, i.e. IKONOS, died in December 2014. And then over the past months, the archive has been offline while DigitalGlobe upgraded the production systems. We are happy to report that archive sales of IKONOS have started again!

Now that IKONOS’ production systems are back online, we were able to obtain a sample of the last cloud-free location it imaged. This 80-cm color IKONOS data was collected on December 20, 2014 over rural southeastern Australia in an area called Ryans Crossing (or Numbugga in other mapping applications). This image was collected about 8 miles northwest of Bega, Australia which is apparently home to the country’s number one cheese manufacturer!

Thank you for the fifteen plus years of amazing images IKONOS–you are already missed.