The Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month – Bankers Life Fieldhouse - Apollo Mapping
Posted on March 3rd, 2020

The Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month – Bankers Life Fieldhouse


A 50-cm color image of Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA collected on July 8, 2018 by Pléiades 1B; and then a 1.5-m SPOT 7 image of the same stadium collected on April 29, 2018. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLEIADES © CNES 2020, Distribution Airbus DS. SPOT © Airbus DS 2020.

From the site of the first tennis Grand Slam of the year, for this March edition of the Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month we head to the Midwestern site of the Men’s Basketball Big Ten Conference Championship, Bankers Life Fieldhouse, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

About the Venue: Located on the southern side of downtown Indianapolis, Bankers Life Fieldhouse is a 750,000-square foot arena with seating for about 18,500 basketball or 20,000 concert-going fans. Opened November 6, 1999 for a cost of $183 million, Bankers Life was designed in a retro throwback style, made popular by other stadiums like Camden Yards in Baltimore, to mimic local Indiana high school fieldhouses. In 2019, Marion County and the Indiana Pacers, a National Basketball Association (NBA) team, reached an agreement whereby the Pacers agree to stay in the city for 25 years in exchange for a major $360 million upgrade to the Fieldhouse, including a year-round outdoor plaza. The expansion will not impact the NBA season with plans to finish construction by October 1, 2022 – and another $120 million promised by Marion County for technological improvements to the arena over a 10-year period.

Fun Factoids: (1) Okay author biases upfront here, I (Brock) have been a long-time fan of the University of Illinois Fighting Illini and this the first year in over a decade I have been excited about late-season Men’s basketball. So of course I had to features Bankers Life Fieldhouse where the Big Ten Championship tips off on March 11th – hopefully the Fighting Illini will play their way to a double bye in the tournament and punch a high tournament seat into March Madness! Sorry for the shameless plug… (2) In the 20 years the Fieldhouse has been open, it has hosted more than 3,700 events, including the Indianapolis 500, the 2009 and 2010 Men’s Final Four, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, Sesame Street Live, and so many more acts! (3) The Bankers Life Fieldhouse features a Robbins All-Star Plus court which offers both superior protection for the players and easy of removal for the arena’s operators – pretty fancy.

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.

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