NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program added imagery from Vantor (formerly Maxar) to its Satellite Data Explorer (SDX) data access and discovery tool. The imagery comes from Vantor’s imagery archive, which dates back to 1999 and exceeds 125 petabytes. The imagery form this archive contains a mix of panchromatic (black/white) and color imagery (up to 18 multispectral bands) and offers global coverage of up to 30 cm resolution.
The table below details the three types of imagery available from this archive in SDX.
| Imagery | Description |
|---|---|
| System-Ready Level 1B Data | This data is ideal for users who are looking to apply their own tools and models to fully process the data and extract the information that they need. It comes with all bands, full bit-depth, and requires further processing to be ready for deriving downstream analytics. This basic processing of the product offers an imagery product ready for custom orthorectification (i.e., corrected to remove distortion caused by terrain variations, and sensor angle). |
| View-Ready Level 2A Data | This processing level is intended for users who want to get straight to using the data to extract downstream analytical information. It provides a basis for deriving downstream analytics and has been orthorectified against a coarse digital elevation model (DEM). It comes with all bands and full bit depth. |
| Map-Ready 3-D | This data product offers standardized and orthorectified, imagery that has been radiometrically calibrated and geo-rectified to produce a highly accurate imagery product ready for seamless integration into workflows. Map-ready data is ideal for image viewing and locational referencing and offers a high degree of cartographic accuracy. |
This imagery comes from Vantor’s Legion satellites, the latest in its Worldview constellation. These spacecraft offer 8-band visible and near-infrared multispectral imagery at a resolution of up to 30 cm for use in a wide variety of applications ranging from agriculture and natural resources monitoring to disaster response and environmental surveillance.
The addition of these datasets to CSDA's SDX tool also enhances its utility for users within the larger NASA Earth observation community to find high-resolution data that meets their needs.