Skybox releases first images from its first satellite

skysat-1 perth image

An image of the Crown Perth entertainment complex in Perth, Australia, taken by the SkySat-1 spacecraft earlier this month. (credit: Skybox Imaging)

One of the more than 30 satellites launched on a Dnepr rocket from Russia last week was SkySat-1, the first satellite for Skybox Imaging, the Silicon Valley startup that plans a constellation of satellites to provide relatively high-resolution images for commercial users. “To our knowledge, SkySat-1 is the smallest satellite ever flown that is capable of capturing imagery at better than 1 meter resolution,” the company stated in a blog post earlier this week. (On the same launch, incidentally, were two smaller satellites for another Earth imagery startup, Planet Labs.)

The blog post was linked to the release of the first imagery from the satellite. The company initially released images taken of Perth, Australia, on December 4; since then, they’ve added a couple more images to their online gallery, of a university in Abu Dhabi and of the coastline of Somalia. “As you can see below, features are clearly discernible that validate our goal to provide high-quality, sub-meter imagery: car windshields, varying car colors, road markings, etc,” the company stated. “These images exceed our early expectations for quality.”

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