In November we were in Europe to check out the historic site of a La Liga match, and for the December edition of the Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month we head back to the States with a look at the site of a classic National Football League (NFL) matchup, FedExField in Washington, D.C.
A 50-cm color image of FedExField in Greater Landover, MD, USA collected on August 10, 2021 by Pléiades 1B; and then a 1.5-m SPOT 6 image of the same stadium collected on October 3, 2021. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLEIADES © CNES 2021, Distribution Airbus DS. SPOT © Airbus DS 2021.About the Stadium: While FedExField is home to the NFL’s Washington Football Team (WFT), the stadium is actually located about 9 miles (14 kilometers) east of the Capital in Greater Landover, Maryland – a common trend in the NFL as the Chicago Bears are likely to be moving to a suburb of Chicago in the coming years. Originally opened in 1997 as Jack Cooke Kent Stadium, the 82,000-seat FedExField replaced Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. The new stadium was spearheaded by then owner Jack Cooke Kent – who died before it opened – and was constructed by Clark Construction for a cost of approximately $250 million. FedEx purchased the naming rights to Jack Cooke Kent Stadium in 1996 for $205 million over 27 years. In 2021, the WFT replaced the grass at FedExField, installing a proprietary Bermuda grass surface that is also used by the Eagles, Chiefs and Titans in their home stadiums.
Fun Factoids: (1) At FedExField on December 12th there is a featured matchup between two of the best teams in the NFL, the WFT and the Dallas Cowboys – wait hold up, that is a total lie! In reality, I have wanted to feature the home stadium of the WFT before but using their old name, which was clear a racist troupe, was not acceptable in our newsletter; so it was finally time to feature them once they changed the name in the summer of 2020. (2) When the new Bermuda grass field was installed in 2021, it required removing some 5,000 cubic yards of soil as well as laying more than 2 miles of new irrigation piping. (3) At one time, FedExField had the largest seating capacity in the NFL at 91,704 during its peak, but multiple years of dismal on-field play (resulting in empty stands) saw the WFT reduce seating capacity at least 3 times in the past years. (4) FedExField provides the WFT with one of the worst home-field advantages in the NFL, perhaps due to its poor design with regards to fan noise amplification.
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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