The first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U.S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds. With an apogee of 65 miles (105 km), these photos were from five times higher than the previous record, the 13.7 miles (22 km) by the Explorer II balloon mission in 1935. The first satellite (orbital) photographs of Earth were made on August 14, 1959 by the U.S. Explorer 6.
The first satellite photographs of the Moon might have been made on October 6, 1959 by the Soviet satellite Luna 3, on a mission to photograph the far side of the Moon. The Blue Marble photograph was taken from space in 1972, and has become very popular in the media and among the public. Also in 1972 the United States started the Landsat program, the largest program for acquisition of imagery of Earth from space. Landsat 7, the most recent Landsat satellite, was launched in 1999. In 1977, the first real time satellite imagery was acquired by the USA's KH-11 satellite system.
The first television image of Earth from space transmitted by the TIROS-1 weather satellite in 1960. All satellite images produced by NASA are published by Earth Observatory and are freely available to the public. Several other countries have satellite imaging programs, and a collaborative European effort launched the ERS and Envisat satellites carrying various sensors. There are also private companies that provide commercial satellite imagery. In the early 21st century satellite imagery became widely available when affordable, easy to use software with access to satellite imagery databases was offered by several companies and organizations.
Satellite images have many applications in meteorology, agriculture, geology, forestry, landscape, biodiversity conservation, regional planning, education, intelligence and warfare. Images can be in visible colours and in other spectra. There are also elevation maps, usually made by radar imaging. Interpretation and analysis of satellite imagery is conducted using specialized remote sensing applications. Some of the first image enhancement of satellite photos was conducted by the U.S. Government and its contractors. For example ESL Incorporated developed some of the earliest two dimensional Fourier transforms applied to digital image processing to address NASA photos as well as national security applications. Satellite imagery is also used in seismology and oceanography in deducing changes to land formation, water depth and sea bed, by color caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.
There are four types of resolution when discussing satellite imagery in remote sensing: spatial, spectral, temporal, and radiometric. They are defined as follows: - spatial resolution is defined as the pixel size of an image representing the size of the surface area (i.e. m2) being measured on the ground, determined by the sensors' instantaneous field of view (IFOV); - spectral resolution is defined by the wavelength interval size (discreet segment of the Electromagnetic Spectrum) and number intervals that the sensor is measuring; temporal resolution is defined by the amount of time (e.g. days) that passes between imagery collection periods for a given surface location; and radiometric resolution is defined as the ability of an imaging system to record many levels of brightness (contrast for example). - Radiometric resolution refers to the effective bit-depth of the sensor (number of grayscale levels) and is typically expressed as 8-bit (0-255), 11-bit (0-2047), 12-bit (0-4095) or 16-bit (0-65,535). - Geometric resolution refers to the satellite sensor's ability to effectively image a portion of the Earth's surface in a single pixel and is typically expressed in terms of Ground Sample Distance, or GSD. GSD is a term containing the overall optical and systemic noise sources and is useful for comparing how well one sensor can "see" an object on the ground within a single pixel. For example, the GSD of Landsat is ~30m, which means the smallest unit that maps to a single pixel within an image is ~30m x 30m. The latest commercial satellite (GeoEye 1) has a GSD of 0.41 m (effectively 0.5 m due to US Govt restrictions on civilian imaging).
The resolution of satellite images varies depending on the instrument used and the altitude of the satellite's orbit. For example, the Landsat archive offers repeated imagery at 30 meter resolution for the planet, but most of it has not been processed from the raw data. Landsat 7 has an average return period of 16 days. For many smaller areas, images with resolution as high as 41 cm can be available.
Satellite imagery is sometimes supplemented with aerial photography, which has higher resolution, but is more expensive per square meter. Satellite imagery can be combined with vector or raster data in a GIS provided that the imagery has been spatially rectified so that it will properly align with other data sets.
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