• TECHNOLOGY Whakaari/White Island, New Zealand, 24 June 2021,10pm NZT. Copyright: Capella Space.
Obstacles of darkness, smoke and cloud cover overcome with on-demand, high resolution SAR imagery for New Zealand Steve Critchlow, Group Managing Director, Critchlow Geospatial Limited
S
atellite imagery services have properly come of age
has become a one-stop shop for satellite imagery for
recently, largely due to the democratising impact of
New Zealand and has recently partnered with a satellite
cloud computing and AI. This has meant that optical
company, Capella Space, that’s looking to change how we
satellite imagery is now readily accessible and directly
see our world.
useful for everyone without the requirement for highly
Capella Space is the first US company to launch and
specialised resource ground stations, and huge onsite
operate commercial high-resolution Synthetic Aperture
processing power and storage.
Radar (SAR) satellites. Critchlow Geospatial’s partnership
Critchlow Geospatial is at the forefront of bringing newly
with Capella means that, for the first time, on-demand,
accessible optical satellite imagery to the New Zealand
0.5m resolution SAR data and analytics are now available
market, where it has multiple applications across a broad
to New Zealand’s government and private sector.
range of industries that power our economy including environmental monitoring and reporting for emergency response, insurance assessment and agriculture purposes. But time and technology wait for no one and the
Why Capella and SAR are making waves globally As the name would suggest, synthetic aperture radar is
advancement of technology innovation in satellite services
not the same as optical imagery. SAR is all about radar and
is rapid and continual. Which is why Critchlow Geospatial
wavelength and there is a lot of clever thinking that has
14 SURVEYING+SPATIAL
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Issue 106 October 2021
