RapidEye Two Years in Space

RapidEye is celebrating its second year in space after its successful satellite launch in August 2008. As a milestone, the company imaged its one billionth square kilometre of the surface of the Earth this year since commercial operations began on 4th February 2009. All of this data collected over the last fourteen months is available in its library which contains multiple datasets including the freshest images.

RapidEye also completed its background mission in North America and collected over 95% of the U.S. over the last three months. The RapidEye Library is continuously growing as new images are downloaded from its satellite constellation daily.

Earlier this year, RapidEye successfully completed an imaging campaign over China and collected 7.8 million km² of the country ahead of schedule. The contract between RapidEye and the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) for the People's Republic of China, was coordinated through RapidEye's Chinese distributor Beijing Earth Observation. The MLR will be mainly using the imagery to protect their agricultural lands from urban sprawl. Even though the contract with the MLR was only for 80% of the country, RapidEye has imaged China in its entirety (9.6 Million km²). The images are available in the RapidEye Library.

In December 2009, the RapidEye Geodata Kiosk was opened, an online shop for satellite imagery with ready-to-use data available immediately after purchase. Over 20 million km² of satellite imagery, including a vast majority of North America and Europe are available for download.

Recent emergency events such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, as well as the oil spill incident in the Gulf of Mexico have shown that satellite imagery plays a great part in being able to support relief efforts. In early 2010, RapidEye completed imaging the regions in Haiti that have been most affected by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in January. RapidEye has also imaged the area next to the epicenter of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile in February this year, and completed change detection analysis to depict vegetation changes in rural areas and flooding in urban areas. The area around the Gulf of Mexico was covered several times since the oil spill occurred. RapidEye also has fresh images of the coast line before the oil spill thus opening the door for an in-depth analysis of the effects of this disaster on the region.

Over the last months the distribution network has been extended to more than fifteen distributors to cover new markets in Eastern Europe and Asia, and is excited to welcome the new and challenging requests they can bring for RapidEye. RapidEye will be attending this year's INTERGEO with its distributors Santiago & Cintra Consultoria from Brazil, and BEO from China, in Cologne, Germany.