When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Lives Fifty years ago, in October 1962, Soviet Union Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko sat in John F. Kennedy’s office, assuring the young American president that the buildup of Soviet-made missiles on the island nation of...
Disaster Response Efforts Highlight the Value of Relationships
Disaster Response Efforts Highlight the Value of Relationships By M. Karen Walker, contractor, Office of Corporate Communications, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (www.nga.mil), Bethesda, Md. The U.S. response toHaiti’s January 2010 earthquake in...
Making Geospatial Intelligence More Accessible
By George Demmy , chief technical officer and co-founder, TerraGo Technologies (www.terragotech.com), Atlanta. As the defense and intelligence communities convene for this year’s GEOINT Symposium, the geospatial industry, which occupies an increasingly...
LiDAR THE I IN BIG DATA
Technology innovations are minimizing the processing times and disk space required to store vast volumes of LiDAR data. By Mark Kozak and Verne LaClair, PAR Government Systems (www.pargovernment.com), Rome, N.Y.  BIGDATAis a term...
SpaceDataHighway Will Redefine High-Speed Data Transfer
Beginning in 2014, an innovative constellation of data-relay satellites will transform the way we transfer data from low Earth orbit satellites and unmanned aircraft systems. By Akos Hegyi, Martin Agnew and Judith Metschies, Astrium Services (www.astrium.eads.net),...
Living in a Post-Envisat World
How can users meet the challenge of C-band SAR data continuity? By David Belton, general manager, MDA Geospatial Services Inc. (www.mdacorporation.com), Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. Â The recent loss of the Envisat satellite is taking its toll on...
Inside the Landsat Data Continuity Mission
Landsats 5 and 7 are all but finished, pinning the program’s future squarely upon the next planned mission. By Kevin P. Corbley, principal, Corbley Communications (www.corbleycommunications.com), Castle Rock, Colo., and John Stenmark, principal, Genesee...
Unmanned Aircraft Bolster Wildfire Response
Unprecedented property loss from wildfires in Colorado and the western United States underscores the importance of emerging multipurpose unmanned aircraft systems for rapid disturbance mapping. By Thomas Zajkowski, a remote sensing specialist with the U.S. Forest...
Celebrating 40 Years of Landsat!
By John R. Hughes, editorial director, Earth Imaging Journal (www.eijournal.com), Greeley, Colo. Within days of the launch of the first Landsat satellite 40 years ago, scientists were astounded when they were able to view a dramatic 81,000-acre fire in an...
Industry Overview
Earth Observation Faces Dire Straits The capacity to observe and study our planet from space faces serious challenges during the coming years. A host of aging satellites, along with several mainstay platforms that recently have failed, plus insufficient funding for...
