Spot Image, a public limited company created in 1982 by the
French Space Agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the
IGN
''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...
, and Space Manufacturers (
Matra
Matra (an acronym for Mécanique Aviation Traction) was a French industrial conglomerate. During its years of operation, it was engaged in a wide range of business activities, primarily focused around automobiles, bicycles, aeronautics and we ...
,
Alcatel Alcatel may refer to:
* Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia
* Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...
, SSC, etc.) is a subsidiary of Airbus Defence and Space (99%). The company is the commercial operator for the
SPOT Earth observation satellites.
Network and partners
Spot Image is a worldwide distributor of products and services using imagery from Earth observation satellites and works through a network of subsidiaries, local offices (Australia, Brazil, China, United States, Japan, Peru, Singapore), and partners. The goal is to provide on-the-spot service with worldwide availability.
Spot Image works with a network of more than 30 direct receiving stations handling images acquired by the SPOT satellites.
Spot Image collaborates with ESA's GMES programme, shares geographic information with the OGC and contributes to the interoperability of web services; with Infoterra Global it continues to offer services for precision-agriculture.
Satellites
![Spot-5](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Spot-5.jpg)
The 3
SPOT satellites in orbit (Spot 5, 6, and 7) provide images with a large choice of resolutions – from 2.5 m to 10 m. Spot Image also distributes multiresolution data from other optical satellites, in particular from
Formosat-2 (Taiwan) and
Kompsat-2 (South Korea), for which it has exclusive distribution rights, and from radar satellites (
TerraSAR-X,
ERS,
Envisat
Envisat ("Environmental Satellite") is a large inactive Earth-observing satellite which is still in orbit and now considered space debris. Operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), it was the world's largest civilian Earth observation satell ...
,
Radarsat). Spot Image is also the exclusive distributor of data from the very-high resolution
Pleiades satellites
The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance of ...
. The launch of Pléiades-1, via a Soyuz rocket, was confirmed on December 16, 2011. The second (Pléiades-2) was launched mid-2012. Spot Image also offers infrastructures for receiving and processing, as well as added value options.
Products
In addition to images, Spot Image proposes innovative added-value products to meet new user-needs:
* ortho-images (SPOTView ortho) whose location accuracy is less than 10 m RMS
* homogeneous territorial coverage, orthorectified (SPOTMaps), which come in natural colours with 2.5 m resolution
* 3D products (SPOT DEM) built from automatic correlation of stereoscopic pairs acquired by SPOT 5's HRS (Haute Résolution Stéréoscopique, High Resolution Stereoscopic) instrument
Among the services offered by Spot File:
* Programming of SPOT satellites: direct-access satellite programming and regular revisit capability over the same point on the globe enable the acquisition of images over a selected area of interest.
* The SPOT archives: more than 18 million images of the whole world, collected by SPOT satellites since 1986, are archived and accessible on line, offering recent or historical geographic information.
On-line services:
SPOTGallerygiving the general public access to images chosen for aesthetic, cultural or thematic reasons,
* In partnership with Google Earth, ’One World, One Year‘ offers the best images from the SPOT satellites whose acquisition data is not more than one year old, for almost the entire planet.
Planet Action, an initiative launched by Spot Image
Its goal is to encourage the Earth observation industry and geographic information professionals to support local projects searching for adaptive solutions to climate change problems. The products and materials available to these professionals – satellite images, geographic information systems, image processing and display software – are indispensable for studying the impact of global warming on our planet, on local and global scales.
Planet Action supports projects that study:
* the impact on populations and habitat
* droughts,
desertification
Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become increasingly arid. It is the spread of arid areas caused by ...
and water resources
* vegetation, biodiversity and ecosystems,
* the oceans
* ice, glaciers and snow cover
Planet Action Web Site
Important dates
![Spotimage building](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Spotimage_building.jpg)
* 1982: Creation of Spot Image in Toulouse, France
* 1983: Creation of Spot Image Corporation in the United States
* 1986: Launch of the SPOT 1 satellite
* 1990: Creation of Spot Imaging Services in Australia
* 1990: Launch of the SPOT 2 satellite
* 1991: Creation of Spot Asia in Singapore
* 1998: Creation of Beijing Spot Image in China
* 1998: Launch of SPOT 4
* 2002: Creation of Tokyo Spot Image
* 2002: Launch of SPOT 5
* 2004: Opening of offices in Brazil and Mexico
* 2004: Signing of a contract with the NSPO for the distribution of data from the Formosat-2 satellite
* 2005: Signing of a contract with KARI for the distribution of data from the Kompsat-2 satellite
* 2006: Opening of an office in Peru
* 2008: Spot Image is 81% owned by Astrium Services, an EADS company
* 2008: Spot Image Brasil replaces the office opened in this country
* 2012 : Launch of SPOT 6
* 2014 : Launch of SPOT 7
See also
*
SPOT (satellites)
SPOT (french: Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre, lit. "Satellite for observation of Earth") is a commercial high-resolution optical Earth imaging satellite system operating from space. It is run by Spot Image, based in Toulouse, France ...
*
CNES
The (CNES; French: ''Centre national d'études spatiales'') is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is und ...
*
EADS
Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: '' ...
External links
Spot Image Web SiteCNES Official Web SiteEADS Official Web SiteAstrium Official Web Site
{{Authority control
Remote sensing companies
Companies based in Toulouse
Aerospace companies of France