Livin`Stone: Satellite Imaging Corporation

Satellite Imaging Technology (Remote Sensing) has led the way to the development of hyperspectral and multispectral sensors around the world, a tool that can be used to map specific materials by detecting specific chemical and material bonds from satellite and airborne sensors. Multispectral data acquired in space and by airborne sensors have been utilized extensively for the past many years in research projects dealing with such diverse problems as land cover and topographic mapping, physical and biological oceanography, and archaeology.

Research has expanded to include analysis of hyperspectral data acquired simultaneously in tens to hundreds of narrow channels. New algorithms have been developed both to exploit the spectral information of these sensors and to better deal with the computational demands of these enormous data sets. It is an excellent tool for environmental assessments, mineral mapping and land cover mapping, wildlife habitat monitoring and general land management studies.

Multispectral imaging often can include large data sets and require specialized processing methods. Hyperspectral data sets are generally composed of about 100 to 200 spectral bands of relatively narrow bandwidths (5-10 nm), whereas, multispectral data sets are usually composed of about 5 to 10 bands of relatively large bandwidths (70-400 nm).

Actual detection of materials is dependent on the spectral coverage, spectral resolution, and signal-to-noise of the spectrometer, the abundance of the material and the strength of absorption features for that material in the wavelength region. In remote sensing situations, the surface materials mapped must be exposed in the optical surface and the diagnostic absorption features must be in regions of the spectrum that are reasonably transparent to the atmosphere.

Advanced image processing techniques from various satellite sensors such as color and panchromatic image data processing, orthorectification, pan sharpening with image data fusion, image enhancements, georeferencing, mosaicing, and color/grayscale balancing and is used in various applications.

Optional satellite imaging features may be incorporate with specialized processing procedures, which are used to analyze:

Land cover classification and mapping
LANDSAT 7 +ETM coastal seafloor mapping
Extraction of culture data
Coral reef detection and mapping
Agriculture and Forestry production
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) classification and mapping
Lithological classification and mapping
Change detection
Environmental monitoring
Urban development and monitoring
Wildlife and Habitat Monitoring

Specialized imaging processing techniques are required to convert the apparent surface reflectance before analysis can take place. Atmospheric correction such as ATCOR (Atmospheric and Topographic Correction) techniques are used to retrieve physical parameters of the earth’s surface such as atmospheric conditions (emissivity, temperature), thermal and atmospheric radiance and transmittance functions to simulate the simplified properties of a 3D atmosphere.

Classification and feature extraction methods have been commonly used for many years for the mapping of minerals and vegetative cover of multispectral and hyperspectral data sets. Vector data structure is essential to most mapping, GIS (geographic information system), and CAD (computer aided design) software packages, which might export data to vector formats such as shape files, DXF, DWG, SVC, and ASV.

ASTER SATELLITE IMAGERY

Satellite Imaging Corporation (SIC) acquires ASTER satellite imagery worldwide.

ABOUT ASTER

ASTER is one of the five state-of-the-art instrument sensor systems on-board Terra a satellite launched in December 1999. It was built by a consortium of Japanese government, industry, and research groups. ASTER monitors cloud cover, glaciers, land temperature, land use, natural disasters, sea ice, snow cover and vegetation patterns at a spatial resolution of 90 to 15 meters. The multispectral images obtained from this sensor have 14 different colors, which allow scientists to interpret wavelengths that cannot be seen by the human eye, such as near infrared, short wave infrared and thermal infrared.

ASTER is the only high spatial resolution instrument on Terra that is important for change detection, calibration and/or validation, and land surface studies. ASTER data is expected to contribute to a wide array of global change-related application areas, including vegetation and ecosystem dynamics, hazard monitoring, geology and soils, land surface climatology, hydrology, land cover change, and the generation of digital elevation models (DEMs). Satellite Imaging Corporation (SIC) is an official distributor for ASTER Imagery through USGS.

ARCHIVED AND NEW ASTER IMAGERY

For many image requests, a matching image can already be located in the archives of ASTER imagery from around the world. If no image data is available in the archives, new ASTER satellite image data can be acquired through a satellite tasking process. Besides providing image data, SIC performs many background tasks to ensure that we meet customer specifications and time schedules. Our company:

Negotiates the attainment of images
Processes imagery, including orthorectification, DSMs, DTMs, and raster-to-vector conversions
Provides 3D terrain visualization and modeling for project planning and support
Incorporates third-party U.S.A. and international GIS data
Consults on band combinations most appropriate to bring out the geographical and manmade features that are most pertinent to your project, and performs spectral analysis for land cover/use classifications and environmental changes

For more information and pricing, please contact us.

ASTER SATELLITE SYSTEM: SENSOR CHARACTERISTICS

Launch Date	18 December 1999 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, USA
Equator Crossing	10:30 AM (north to south)
Orbit	705 km altitude, sun synchronous
Orbit Inclination	98.3 degrees from the equator
Orbit Period	98.88 minutes
Grounding Track Repeat Cycle	16 days
Resolution	15 to 90 meters

The ASTER instrument consists of three separate instrument subsystems:

VNIR (Visible Near Infrared), a backward looking telescope which is only used to acquire a stereo pair image

SWIR (ShortWave Infrared), a single fixed aspheric refracting telescope

TIR (Thermal Infrared)

ASTER high-resolution sensor is capable of producing stereoscopic (three-dimensional) images and detailed terrain height models. Other key features of ASTER are:

Multispectral thermal infrared data of high spatial resolution
Highest spatial resolution surface spectral reflectance, temperature, and emissivity data within the Terra instrument suite
Capability to schedule on-demand data acquisition requests

ASTER has 14 bands of information. For more information, please see the following table:

Instrument	VNIR	SWIR	TIR
Bands	1-3	4-9	10-14
Spatial Resolution	15m	30m	90m
Swath Width	60km	60km	60km
Cross Track Pointing	± 318km (± 24 deg)	± 116km (± 8.55 deg)	± 116km (± 8.55 deg)
Quantisation (bits)	8	8	12

Geology, Yemen

Images are orthorectified and ready to use in your preferred GIS or remote sensing software.

ASTER VNIR - VISIBLE AND NEAR INFRARED

VNIR data at 15m resolution is currently the best resolution multispectral satellite data available commercially, with the exception of very high resolution data like IKONOS or QuickBird.

The VNIR subsystem operates in three spectral bands at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, with a resolution of 15 meters. A comparison with the panchromatic 15m band on the LANDSAT 7 ETM+ data shows that ASTER imagery is better both spatially and spectrally.