Astrium, Europe’s leading space technology company, and CNES, have achieved a major improvement in Pléiades image quality, including sharper products and enhanced geometry, as announced in a recent press release. Astrium Services will use a new algorithm developed by the French Space Agency (CNES) to automatically sharpen Pléiades’ satellite imagery. All data, archived or newly acquired when processed now will automatically feature this upgrade.
A new algorithm, developed by the French Space Agency, provides images with better-drawn, neater contours, with a better understanding of the surface texture. These improvements greatly facilitate the analysis of the image (photo-interpretation) and also improve the accuracy of 3D models resulting from stereo taken images. Pléiades is an optical observation system consisting of two identical satellites that deliver 50 cm colour products. Operating on a phased orbit, the Pléiades system affords a daily revisit capability on any point of the globe, to better address civilian and military requirements.
