On September 3, 2007, Steve Fossett took off alone in a single engine aircraft from a private ranch in western Nevada. When the famed adventurer had not returned by nightfall, family and friends contacted local authorities, and by the next morning, news outlets around the world reported that Fossett and his aircraft were missing.

Just as the massive search-and-rescue effort was taking shape early on September 5, SPOT Image Corp. received the first call from a commercial client requesting remote sensing support for the operation. Within minutes of receiving the client request, SPOT collected imagery of the site with the SPOT 4 satellite, which was the first commercial imagery over the area available following Fossett’s disappearance.

Four hours later, SPOT had processed the imagery and delivered it digitally to the client. This customer in turn distributed the images in hardcopy and digital formats to officials planning the search and rescue operations being staged in the Nevada desert. Web applications were employed to push the imagery out to teams based in different locations that would be conducting the search by ground and air. The 10-meter-resolution panchromatic imagery gave rescue teams the first glimpses into the incredibly rugged terrain that had to be scoured.

By the next day, the Nevada National Guard and Civil Air Patrol were fully engaged in the search. The National Guard became the first military organization to contact SPOT with a request for imagery. The company tasked the SPOT 2 satellite to collect 10-meter panchromatic imagery over the site that morning. More than 10,000 square-kilometers of image data were collected and transmitted in real time to a receiving station in Alberta, Canada, operated by Iunctus Geomatics, which sent the processed data to SPOT for distribution to the client.

Frequent Revisits

Although the search for a small civilian aircraft was out of the ordinary, SPOT’s involvement in a military operation requiring fast image acquisition and delivery was not unusual. Having access to four imaging satellites means the company has a daily revisit capability for most of the Earth’s surface and can image enormous areas in short periods of time.

The frequent-revisit capability of multiple satellites increases the potential to capture imagery over a target area on a specific day. These same capabilities are frequently relied upon by emergency response officials to assist in tracking rapidly changing conditions in dynamic events such as floods or wildfires while they are still occurring.

“Any operation requiring immediate acquisition and fast delivery to end users is precisely the situation SPOT is prepared to handle,” said Nicolas Stussi, the company’s director of services. “Over the past two years, we have focused our efforts on assembling a constellation of diverse imaging satellites, a network of ground stations for real-time downlinks nearly anywhere in the world, and a variety of digital delivery mechanisms for rapid imagery dissemination to users at any location.”

As a result of these unique capabilities, SPOT is often called upon by defense/intelligence agencies and homeland security offices to provide rapid acquisition and dissemination of imagery following man-made and natural disasters that must be mapped quickly to efficiently deploy emergency resources. In the past year, for example, the SPOT constellation has been called into action to assist with emergency response activities following Hurricane Dean in Mexico and Super Typhoon Ioke on Wake Island in the Pacific.

“SPOT has put special emphasis on developing Web-based systems for fast digital delivery of large image files to both commercial and military clients,” said Stussi. “We routinely disseminate image data digitally by FTP and e-mail, and embedded in Web-based applications, such as Google Earth and ESRI ArcGIS.”

In the Fossett search, Nevada Air Nat-ional Guard, operating the Eagle Vision III system in Reno, Nev., called SPOT on the second full day of search operations to get direct satellite imagery support. Eagle Vision is an Air Force program managing and operating a network of self-contained, mobile satellite imagery receiving and processing stations. Developed by EADS DCS, each Eagle Vision system is capable of receiving telemetry from all SPOT satellites.

While SPOT had been receiving imagery from the SPOT 2 and SPOT 4 satellites and pushing it out electronically via FTP and over the Web to the client, Eagle Vision facilitated a data downlink directly to the National Guard in Nevada, shaving time off the delivery.

Eagle Vision

The Pentagon developed the Eagle Vision program for precisely the type of scenario in which it was used in Nevada. The mobile system can be driven or flown to an emergency or military location anywhere in the world and set up to receive image data directly from the orbiting SPOT satellites. It has complete onboard capabilities to process and enhance raw image data products for delivery in either digital or hardcopy formats.

The Eagle Vision systems are designed to receive SPOT data as their primary optical imagery. The strategic location and quick mobilization of the systems around the world made them popular among military users who need real-time downlinks of imagery for fast delivery to end users in the field. This scenario was highlighted in September 2006 when Super Typhoon Ioke hit Wake Island. The Air Force was able to receive SPOT images at Eagle Vision V stationed in Hawaii in near real time, to assist with the rescue and rebuilding efforts.

Even with SPOT-2 and -4 data flowing through Eagle Vision and FTP sites to support thousands of volunteers in the Fossett search, SPOT began acquiring and receiving image data from the FORMOSAT-2 satellite. Launched in 2004 by Taiwan into an orbit specifically selected for daily revisit, this satellite collects panchromatic imagery with two-meter spatial resolution. Under a worldwide distribution arrangement, SPOT acquired another 10,000 square-kilometers of imagery with the Taiwanese satellite on September 6 and delivered it to clients within 24 hours.

FORMOSAT-2 is a commercial satellite that is only just now receiving widespread attention. F2 is unique in the remote sensing arena due to its daily worldwide revisit and high-resolution capability. As a result, it is seeing increased use as a means to monitor geopolitical developments and detect daily changes over most any area of interest, worldwide.

The next three days were even busier. SPOT 4 acquired another 50,000 square kilometers of imagery on September 7, and on the following day, the SPOT 5 satellite passed over the target site. Launched in 2002, SPOT 5 has two independently focused imaging sensors that allow it to capture dual 60-kilometer-wide data sets over a target area in a single pass. It acquires 2.5-meter panchromatic and 10-meter multispectral imagery.

For the Fossett search, SPOT programmed both sensors to work together to collect a 120-kilometer-wide swath over the search area. In a single pass on September 8, SPOT 5 imaged more than 100,000 square kilometers of Nevada desert, essentially the entire search-and-rescue area of interest at the time.

The 2.5-meter SPOT 5 and 2-meter FORMOSAT imagery generated a lot of excitement because people knew the wreckage of an aircraft would show up if it were out in the open. Some of the high-resolution SPOT imagery was made available for public involvement on an Amazon.com Website called Mechanical Turk, where thousands of people reportedly searched for visual evidence of the crash.

By September 11, SPOT had collected imagery with all of its satellites covering the entire search area, more than 200,000 square-kilometers, at spatial resolutions of 2-, 2.5- and 10-meters. All of the imagery was delivered to end users within 24 hours or less of acquisition by the satellites, and much of it was received in less than four hours.

SPOT executives say the recent emergency events, such as the Fossett search, Hurricane Dean, and Super Typhoon Ioke, illustrate the capabilities that are now expected from remote sensing systems. No longer is a system judged purely on its spatial resolution or another single characteristic. Today’s users—military organizations, commercial companies and private citizens—are looking for fully integrated end-to-end capabilities that guarantee fast acquisition over large areas and rapid dissemination to end users anywhere in a format they can use right away.

As this issue went to press, no crash site had been located. Fossett’s wife has asked a court that he be declared legally dead.

Kevin Corbley is a communications consultant specializing in geospatial technologies.

This article has been published in the December 2007 issue of Military Geospatial Technology (www.mgt-kmi.com)