Kayak Expedition Team Conquers One of the Last Great Adventures on Earth

During a recent descent of Tibet’s Tsangpo
River by kayak, satellite images from Space Imaging’s IKONOS satellite proved
to be a crucial planning and mapping tool for the 87-man Outside Tsangpo
Expedition Team. Sponsored by Outside Magazine and Chevrolet’s Chevy
Avalanche, a team of the world’s best expeditionary kayakers joined forces to
attempt the historic first descent of the Tsangpo Gorge. The Tsangpo River is
the highest river and the deepest gorge in the world. The river is thought by
many professional adventurers to contain the most feared whitewater on the
planet.

After a 1998 National Geographic Society-sponsored kayaking expedition of
the Tsangpo River, Space Imaging took the world’s first commercial
high-resolution satellite images of the remote Tibetan river. That expedition
was called off before completion because of the tragic whitewater death of a
kayaker.

Then, in the summer of 1999, Scott Lindgren, a 29-year old world-class
kayaker and Emmy-award winning cameraman, started planning to take a team to
descend the Tsangpo. He turned to Space Imaging for the IKONOS satellite
images that were taken in May 2000.

“The satellite images were an absolute key to the success of the
expedition,” said team leader Lindgren. “The images were like being in a
helicopter above the water. They gave us a bird’s-eye view of the entire
river before we ever left the U.S. Some areas of the Tsangpo Gorge have never
been seen by man, that is until IKONOS took these amazing pictures.”

Showing rapids, steep canyon walls, trails and mountain passes, the set of
20 images, valued at more than $48,000, was loaded into the team’s laptop
computers and viewed with ERDAS’ ViewFinder software. The very accurate,
high-resolution images allowed the team, by using GPS coordinates, to navigate
along specific sections of the river and know in advance what lay ahead. The
team developed entry and exit waypoints that were then programmed into GPS
receivers to keep the team on course. Large image-maps, overlaid with
latitude and longitude grids, were also printed out and laminated, and were
used daily by both on- and off-river teams.

“We spent days pouring over the satellite image-maps. They gave us a far
stronger understanding of what we were to encounter than I ever expected. I
can’t imaging doing another expedition of this magnitude without satellite
imagery,” said Lindgren.

The entire expedition, which started on Jan. 21, 2002, took more than a
month to complete. Not only did they complete the first descent of the
Tsangpo Gorge, but they were also only the third Western expedition ever to
traverse the Gorge, the first two being done on foot —
– Frank Kingdon Ward in
1924 and Ken Storm, Jr.’s team in 1998.

Lindgren and other team members filmed the historic trek for Outside
Television Productions. The expedition TV special, “Into the Tsangpo Gorge,”
will air on NBC Sports this Sunday, May 26, at 2:30 p.m. ET. Outside
Magazine’s coverage of the expedition will be its cover story in the July
issue and is currently featured on Outside Magazine’s Web site at
www.outsidemag.com . Also, Lindgren is scheduled to be interviewed on NBC’s
Today show on Saturday, May 25.

About Space Imaging

Space Imaging is a leading supplier of visual information products and
services derived from space imagery and aerial photography. The company
launched the world’s first one-meter resolution, commercial Earth imaging
satellite, IKONOS, on Sept. 24, 1999. Other products are produced from the
Indian Remote Sensing satellites, U.S. Landsat, and Canada’s RADARSAT. Space
Imaging also delivers aerial-derived imagery products collected by its own
Digital Airborne Imaging System (DAIS-1(TM)). For detailed information about
Space Imaging, visit its Web site at www.spaceimaging.com .