PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
October 2014
931
The use of @twi t ter to query anything geospat ial
shaped boxes covered in solar panels sitting on industrial tri-
pods inside the manufacturing clean room at Skybox. SkySat-1
was launched inNovember 2013 and soon after was transmitting
4-band sub 1-meter imagery back to their mission control center
in Mountain View, California. The SkySat-2 was launched this
past summer on July 8, 2014. Figure 2 below Skybox’s HQ in
Mountain View, California taken from SkySat-1.
One of the other highlights from the launch of both SkySat’s is
that each is capable of recording 90 seconds of HD Video during
scene captures. A Skybox objective in launching as many as 24
satellites in the next several years is to have repeated visits over
the same location on any spot on earth several times a day.
So if you are on Twitter, take the opportunity to follow
@skyboximaging and explore other information about them.
If you want to know when SkySat’s or other satellites are
overhead possibly capturing imagery of you, then search on
Twitter for @SpyMeSat. SpyMeSat is a free Android and Apple
app produced by @OrbitLogic that will give you advance notice
of when satellites you select to monitor will be overhead. As
you can see Twitter is a valuable resource for being in-the-
know for just about anything that interests you.
I would love to hear ideas for future columns.
What are you curious about?
Write me at:
Jim Peters works in the Geospatial Industry. For ASPRS, he
currently serves as the Chair for the Electronic Communications
Committee.
I started my Twitter account (@jimpeters2012) sometime
in the year, you guessed it “2012”. I first signed up to follow
announcements from a software company that I was utilizing
to produce maps at my day job. I had heard about Twitter
several years prior during the presidential election as it was a
great source to pass current information around to many people
using 140 characters or less. Some of you reading this have
Twitter accounts and some of you may not. Twitter adds great
value in that it provides unparalleled access to new technology
companies and monitoring activities of existing companies.
Yes, like any social media outlet, you as an individual need to
monitor who you select to follow or allowing others to follow
what you tweet/retweet.
As I stated in the introductory article for Behind the Scenes,
I thrive on using Twitter to keep current on companies, news
outlets, and like many of you, my favorite TV and movie stars.
Having grown up in a household where my dad worked for NASA
during a majority of the Apollo missions, I was inspired to begin
following @skyboximaging on Twitter. In reading Twitter feeds in
late 2012 and early 2013, I learned that Skybox was founded by a
few aspiring rocket scientists and had a Board Member who had
once held a mission critical position with NASA. This new space
race that began within the last five years to launch many smaller
satellites was reminiscent of the early days of the 1960’s United
States’ space race. In one of the Twitter links from Skybox you
can see a black and white print hanging in the Skybox break room
kitchen of Gene Kranz standing in the Mission Control Center at
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX. Kranz is a NASA veteran
whose career began during the Mercury missions to the famed
Apollo flights to the
moon. The print
provides inspira-
tion to continue the
exploration of the
planet earth.
The constella-
tion of satellites
that Skybox has
planned to de-
ploy began with
their own design
and manufacture
of SkySat-1 and
SkySat-2. Figure
1 shows two sat-
ellites; the cube Figure 1. Courtesy Skybox Imaging.
Figure 2.
