Last month we were in a small Danish town checking out the site of an international equestrian competition, and for the September edition of the Pléiades 1 – Pléiades Neo Stadium of the Month we head to my (Brock here!) current hometown, Chicago, with a look at Guaranteed Rate Field.

A 30-cm color image of Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago, Illinois, USA collected on May 23, 2022 by Pléiades Neo 3; and then a 50-cm Pléiades 1A image of the same stadium collected on July 3, 2021. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLÉIADES © CNES 2022.

A quick update here for our readers on the 30-cm Pléiades Neo constellation!

As of now, plans are on track for Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 to launch in November with expected commercialization of the data by the end of 2022 or early 2023. When fully operational, the 30-cm Pléiades Neo constellation will collect some 2 million square kilometers of imagery per day with the ability to image locations twice per day.

About the Stadium: Guaranteed Rate Field is located on the south side of Chicago about 4 miles (7 kilometers) from downtown in the trendy neighborhood of Bridgeport. The vision for the ballpark was born in 1987 when the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill creating the Illinois Sports Facility Authority (ISFA) who developed and operates Guaranteed Rate Field. Construction on the stadium started on May 7, 1989 and was completed by April 18, 1991 (my birthday, random!) for a cost of $137 million. Guaranteed Rate Field was the first new sports facility built in Chicago since 1929 and currently has seating for some 40,615 fans. The ballpark features a natural grass surface made of a blend of eight bluegrass species with infield dirt that was actually brought in from the old Comiskey Park.

Fun Factoids: (1) Sometimes when I draft these articles, I pull from my personal life as is the case here. We are featuring Guaranteed Rate Field this month as well on June 23rd I actually went to the ballpark to watch the Chicago White Sox (the home team at Guaranteed Rate) get beaten by the Baltimore Orioles 4 to nothing. So more than anything, this is a celebration of a win that has helped propel us to a .500 record at the time this article was drafted! (2) In its relatively short life, the south-side ballpark has churned through three names, Comiskey Park until 2003; then US Cellular Field until 2016; and currently Guaranteed Rate Field. Guaranteed Rate is a Chicago-based mortgage company who purchased the naming rights for $20.4 million over 10 years – that said, this figure varies depending on the source you check. (3) As of 2018, the ISFA was some $207.5 million in debt after constructing this stadium as well renovating it and Solider Field (home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears) over the years. That debt will be paid by Illinois residents for decades to come.

The 50-cm 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 and Pléiades Neo for your next geospatial projects.

A variety of Pléiades 1 products are available from both a well-established 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 both of these satellite constellations.

The 30-cm Pléiades Neo High-Resolution Satellite Constellation

Pléiades Neo is our newest high-resolution satellite constellation. The first Neo satellite went up in April 2021 and the second in August of the same year. This 30-centimeter resolution constellation will add two more satellites in the next few years and upgrade from daily to intraday revisits. Pléiades Neo has six multispectral bands with 1.2-meter resolution, including a deep blue and two infrared bands, along with a 30-centimeter resolution panchromatic band.

The archive is growing every day, and the satellites are available for new collections, making Pléiades Neo the perfect solution for site monitoring. Check out our beautiful sample images in the Pléiades Neo gallery.

More sample images and technical information about Pléiades 1 can be found on our website here; while the same can be found here for the Pléiades Neo constellation.

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