The Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month – Toyota Center - Apollo Mapping
Posted on January 8th, 2019

The Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month – Toyota Center

For the last Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month article of 2018 we checked out the site of a historic college football matchup on the East Coast, and for this first edition of 2019 we head to Texas for the site of a mid-season, high-stakes National Basketball Association (NBA) game between the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers, i.e. the Toyota Center.


A 50-cm color image of the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas, USA collected on May 27, 2018 by Pléiades 1B; and then a 1.5-m SPOT 6 image of the same stadium collected on April 26, 2018. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLEIADES © CNES 2018, Distribution Airbus DS. SPOT © Airbus DS 2018.

About the Venue: Spanning six city blocks of Houston, Texas, the Toyota Center was designed by Morris Architects and opened during October 2003. At the request of the owner of the Houston Rockets – the NBA team that calls the arena home – it was buried some 32-feet below ground to reduce the number of stairs visitors had to climb to reach their seats. Built at a total cost of $235 million, Toyota bought the naming rights in 2003 for $95 million over 20 years. The Toyota Center features 18,500 seats for basketball games, 17,800 when used for ice hockey (as it was in the past) and 19,300 for concerts.

Fun Factoids: (1) The Toyota Center is site of a January 19th match-up between the Rockets and the Lakes, which will be the second time LeBron James and James Harden have matched up this season. (2) It took a massive amount of materials to build the arena, including 45,000 cubic yards of concrete, 350,000 masonry blocks and 650,000 square feet of drywall. (3) The Houston Rockets trace the roots of their name to 1968 when they were based in San Diego as a tribute to the rockets that were sending astronauts into the heavens during the great Space Race.

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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