SAN FRANCISCO – Iceye, the Finnish Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite operator, unveiled a new product March 26: imagery with a resolution of 25 centimeters.
Iceye produces the 25-centimeter SAR imagery with data acquired by a single satellite staring at a location for 10 seconds.
“The full amount of data from an individual satellite acquisition is then processed into a single very high-resolution data frame,” Pekka Laurila, Iceye co-founder and chief strategy officer, told SpaceNews.
Iceye plans to begin offering customers access to the 25-centimeter SAR imagery in mid-2020 from its current constellation of three SAR satellites, Laurila said by email.
Iceye captures 25-centimeter resolution imagery for targets of interest in the azimuth direction or in the direction the satellite is traveling. For targets in the range direction or perpendicular to the satellite’s path, Iceye captures imagery with 50-centimeter resolution, according to the March 26 news release.
“Site activity monitoring based on very high-resolution SAR data enables our customers to unlock new insights in virtually all use cases that utilize Iceye’s current one-meter resolution imaging,” Mark Matossian, CEO of Iceye’s U.S subsidiary, said in a statement. “Twenty-five centimeter resolution SAR imaging is ground-breaking to come from the world’s smallest SAR satellites. Commercial and government SAR customers will be able to achieve very detailed change detection, perform improved object classification and track ever smaller objects from orbit.”
In recent months, Iceye has unveiled new products at a steady pace. The firm unveiled radar imagery with resolution better than one meter in August, released stereo images from its newest satellites in September, began commercial sales of one-meter Spotlight imagery in October and showcased a new video product earlier this month.
Iceye also opened a U.S. office in the San Francisco Bay Area in February.
