The Pléiades 1 – Pléiades Neo Stadium of the Month – Q2 Stadium - Apollo Mapping
Posted on June 7th, 2022

The Pléiades 1 – Pléiades Neo Stadium of the Month – Q2 Stadium

In May we checked out the location of a Major League Baseball game on the West Coast, and for this edition of the Pléiades 1 – Pléiades Neo Stadium of the Month we check out a new Major League Soccer (MLS) stadium in Austin, Texas, i.e., Q2 Stadium.


A 30-cm color image of Q2 Stadium in Austin, Texas, USA collected on March 26, 2022 by Pléiades Neo 4; and then a 50-cm Pléiades 1A image of the same stadium collected on March 20, 2022. 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 September with expected commercialization of the data by the end of 2022. 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: Q2 Stadium is located in north Austin, Texas about 7 miles (11 kilometers) from downtown. The vision for Q2 Stadium was born in early 2018 when Precourt Sports Ventures announced they would move the MLS Columbus Crew SC to Austin. The operator picked out a site for the new stadium and worked out a lease with the City of Austin for the land – but before the Crew moved to Austin, the team was bought by a local investor and so a new franchise was awarded to Austin, the Austin Football Club. The new stadium opened on June 19, 2021 after being built by Walter P Moore at a cost of approximately $260 million. Q2 Stadium features a unique grass pitch as the varietal, Platinum TE Seashore Paspalum is grown to tolerate the heat of Texas’ summers.

Fun Factoids: (1) Q2 Stadium is the site of a June 25th match between the Austin FC and Dallas FC – currently the second and fourth place teams (respectively) in the MLS Western conference. (2) According to this list of MLS venues, Q2 Stadium was one of three stadiums to open in the 2021 MLS season, TQL Stadium and Lower.com Field were the other two. (3) Q2 Stadium was designed with Austin’s hot summers in mind as the field is oriented north-south allowing strong prevailing wind patterns in order to cool fans. The venue also features the second highest outside walls in the MLS which shade fans; and for those in the most direct light, their seats are made of mesh which reduces heat buildup.

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.

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