Kind: captions
Language: en
have you ever wondered where satellite
imagery comes from and if you wanted to
purchase it where would you go and what
organizations you would look up today
we're diving into the world of how we
obtain detailed images of Earth from
space and we're going to look at the
commercial satellite providers that take
them these providers operate satellites
that circle the Earth capturing detailed
images on a daily basis and they offer a
closer look at our world at a more
updated look than what you might find on
freely available satellite imagery these
images can assist us in things such as
urban planning environmental monitoring
human rights monitoring investigative
journalism and providing valuable
insights and information about our
planet and its diverse environments so
in this session we're going to take a
closer look at some of the leading
commercial satellite providers like
maxar Airbus Planet labs and also the
third party services that sell them so
whether you're interested in science
satellite imagery or just finding cool
things on the Earth's surface this video
is for
you hi everyone and welcome back to this
series on how to do open- Source
investigations from home I'm Ben and
this is part 23 so let's get
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started first up we're going to start
with maxar which is one of the biggest
and most well-known providers of high
resolution satellite imagery you might
know maxar from some of the news events
in the past where they' provided
detailed images of conflicts human
rights abuses interesting things and
also wides scale damage caused by
environmental patterns around the world
and if you go to their news and events
page you can see many of the images that
have been provided by maxar showing some
of the overview of things that have
happened around the world like these
destroyed buildings on the coastline in
Japan on maxar website they have a
really interesting section where you can
go through their products and services
and you can search for imagery this is a
way that you can independently purchase
imagery so for example if I wanted to
purchase an image from c i could merely
select that area and have a look at some
of the imagery that might exist as you
can see there's a fair bit
and it's fairly updated as well this is
a really great way to view some of the
imagery before you might want to
consider reaching out and trying to
purchase independent shots from maxar
one of the other interesting aspects for
maxar is their open data program this is
a really great approach that Maxi has
provided and having a look at providing
freely available satellite imagery for
major crisis events around the world it
allows us to see for example
environmental disasters or events that
have happened around the world and we
can actually access some of the
independent satellite runs or chips as
they're referred to of some of these
satellite incidents for example we can
have a look at the Libya floods and we
can have a look at the pre-event and
post-event satellite imagery which is
freely available to download there
what's useful is that this downloads a
tiff file which is a file that you can
open up on any satellite browser you use
that might be Google Earth or you can
also open it up in platforms like qgis
or
argis for example here is satellite
imagery uh provided by maxiz open data
program of the damage caused by the
flooding in Dera Libya that was so
widely reported in the news and also
allows a huge amount of beneficial
research and documentation as to the
aspects of that FL FL the result of that
flood and any mitigations for future
flooding that could be done in that area
moving on to the next platform we have
Planet satellite imagery planet has two
types of data so it has very high
resolution data but then also data that
is not as clear but is more updated so
it provides satellite imagery that might
look like Max RS in terms of clarity but
then it also provides more frequently
updated data that might not be as clear
as well so you have Planet scope and
skysat images what's interesting about
planet is that when you go through the
website and often you'll have to provide
your email address and other details in
order to access these but there's a
large amount of educational resources on
using satellite imagery for geospatial
analysis on the planet website it's
called a planet school or a planet
University and it's a fascinating uh set
of product prods with a wide amount of
future uses as well as current and
contemporary and previous uses of
satellite imagery to really keep those
skills sh that you're working on if
you're in the industry you can also see
the Content Library as well which shows
some of the more recent products in
satellite imagery as well as some of the
other skills that you might be able to
pick up to give you an example of Planet
satellite imagery I have this image that
uh I posted quite some time ago on my
Twitter account you might actually
notice I post regular highresolution
satellite imagery from planet on my
Twitter account as well as part of my
human rights work that I regularly do to
monitor some of these areas and monitor
when events occur in grounds for example
their satellite shot of Elina in sedan's
Dar 4 region on April 28 which showed
numerous burnt patterns on the ground
after clashes between militia Fighters
and other forces in the area the next
big
satellite provider and one that you
might be familiar with from a lot of the
Google Earth imagery similar to maxar is
also Airbus airb you might be familiar
with for its airplanes but it also
provides satellite imagery as well and
has regular satellite runs around the
world airb do have a media center and
they showcase some images from around
the world for example we have quite a
high resolution image of the dubby Air
Show from 2023
as seen from one of their satellites and
that detail really shows up there in
terms of being able to identify some of
the aircraft on the ground and what they
look like from above as well and you
could probably match this with a lot of
the photos and videos that were taken on
the ground to even get measurements of
some of these new types of aircraft and
get an understanding and cross reference
point to see what they look like from
space as well so I've shown you some of
the top commercial satellite providers I
won't go into any pricings or details
with the packages that they offer as
many of these change depending on the
size of an organization and other things
that would be included in those
contracts however what would you do if
you wanted to purchase a satellite image
from one of these providers well there
are independent thirdparty resellers of
satellite imagery for example one of
these is skyfi so how do you order from
people like this well if you simply
click order now and I'm going to give
you an example of how you can order
imagery from an area called buger in
Nigeria's Northeast so when searching
for this specific area I'm able to
search for the town 1 km squ but maybe
I'll make that a little bit bigger I can
draw a rectangle and you can see the
imagery that pops up on the left here
and if I zoom out a bit more you can see
the tiles that I would be purchasing so
you can purchase Planet imagery and it
will allow you to see the imagery that
you might purchase but then you have
other imagery available here and you can
order images through this platform and
it allows you to both use them and
purchase them or you can obviously use
them in another platform as well if you
like after purchasing that there's also
a similar provider called Apollo mapping
and this allows you to search from a
very large satellite Archive of
commercial satellite providers similarly
we're going to have a look for buger in
Nigeria I'm going to do the same style
of wide search over the area and you can
see some of the satellite tiles that
have popped up in my filters we are able
to see the data sets that we'd be
looking for and this shows you the
providers that they use for example we
can see maxar in there Planet as well um
we can also see geosat Airbus is there
and a number of others including black
Sky obviously the NASA content is there
uh we have image set International which
is another popular provider and many
others that are easy to to go through
and easy to purchase through here and we
can simply select any of these platforms
we can have a look for them so here is
world viw 1 which is a Max R1 we also
have worldview 2 and I could submit for
a quote to purchase that that content
and and purchase that 50 cm resolution
satellite imagery there as well so this
is a much easier way to purchase
commercial satellite imagery I must warn
that satellite imagery isn't necessarily
cheap and can sometimes be quite
expensive with tiles ranging up into
hundreds of dollars however you will get
more of an accurate reflection on the
pricing if you have a look at the area
the type of imagery and the data set you
want to extract as well as the size of
it each of these organizations has
unique offerings and they offer
different satellite capabilities and
obviously various services to cater to a
range of user needs for satellite
imagery Specialists and those wanting to
look a little bit closer at the Earth's
surface we've explored companies like
maxar Airbus and Planet Labs that
operate satellites to capture detailed
imagery of the Earth's surface and
really help us discover a little bit
more about it I hope that this overview
has provided you with a clearer
understanding of commercial satellite
providers and the significant work that
they do in observing and analyzing our
planet and allowing us to use that
imagery thank you so much for joining me
on this session or explainer on
Commercial satellite imagery if you have
any questions or topics you'd like me to
cover in future videos please drop a
comment below and don't forget to
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more topics like this one and I'll see
you in the next session
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