RapidEye, a German firm that claims to be the only geospatial solutions provider to own and operate a constellation of five identical earth observation satellites, announced it recently completed an extensive imagery campaign over Africa. The campaign, which ran for 25 weeks from September 2010 until March 1, 2011, covered more than 107 million km2 of the continent. The resulting imagery is now available for purchase from the RapidEye Library.
Michael Oxfort, RapidEye’s head of engineering, said, “We tasked our satellites to acquire over 4,200 takes over the entire continent of Africa. Many areas of rainforest, such the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have been collected with great success and very little cloud cover.”
Since February 2009 when its satellite constellation began commercial operation, the RapidEye system has collected more than 1.8 billion km2 of imagery worldwide. According to the company, its library now contains more than 90% of Africa with less than 10% cloud cover. Many areas have been imaged multiple times.
