RapidEye satellite imagery now covers 25% of Earth

German satellite imagery provider RapidEye announced on 28th May that they have collected more than 69 Million square kilometers of at least 80% cloud-free images during their first 100 days of operation.

The RapidEye satellites constellation was launched in August 2008 and started to operate in February 2009. The imaging campaigns were concentrated in Europe, the U.S., Brazil and China. More than 36 Million square kilometers of the Earth‘s surface, or about one quarter of the total landmass were imaged, often several times.

“When you consider the RapidEye system started operations only in February of this year, the collection rate of more than 69 Million km² of useful images in a little over 3 months is quite impressive,” remarks Michael Oxfort, RapidEye‘s Head of Operations and Engineering. “This gives our customers a lot of high quality data to choose from. Even more remarkable is the fact that our system capacity has not been reached yet. We expect our Library to grow to even higher rates in the coming months by expanding our imaging campaigns to other areas around the globe.”

RapidEye operates its own constellation of five satellites capable of downloading over 4 million square kilometers of data per day at 6.5 meter nominal ground resolution.