IKONOS

IKONOS 2
Organization	GeoEye GeoEye GeoEye Inc. is a commercial satellite imagery company based in Herndon, Virginia that is the world's largest space imaging corporation....
Mission Type	Earth observation Earth observation satellite Earth observation satellites are satellites specifically designed to observe Earth from orbit, similar to reconnaissance satellites but intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, meteorology, map making etc....
Contractor	Lockheed Martin Space Systems Lockheed Martin Space Systems Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company is one of the four major business divisions of Lockheed Martin. It is headquartered in Denver, Colorado with additional sites in Sunnyvale, California; Newtown, Pennsylvania; Huntsville, Alabama; and elsewhere in the US and UK...
Satellite of	Earth Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
Launch	September 24, 1999 on an Athena 2
Launch site	Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base, located approximately northwest of Lompoc, California. It is under the jurisdiction of the 30th Space Wing, Air Force Space Command ....
Mission duration	Ongoing
Mass Mass Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...	726 kg (launch)
Webpage	http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/products/imagery-sources/Default.aspx#ikonos
Orbital elements
Semi-major axis Semi-major axis The major axis of an ellipse is its longest diameter, a line that runs through the centre and both foci, its ends being at the widest points of the shape...	7056.97 km
Eccentricity Orbital eccentricity The orbital eccentricity of an astronomical body is the amount by which its orbit deviates from a perfect circle, where 0 is perfectly circular, and 1.0 is a parabola, and no longer a closed orbit...	0.00013
Inclination Inclination Inclination in general is the angle between a reference plane and another plane or axis of direction.-Orbits:The inclination is one of the six orbital parameters describing the shape and orientation of a celestial orbit...	98.10 degrees
Orbital Period	98.33 minutes
Right ascension Right ascension Right ascension is the astronomical term for one of the two coordinates of a point on the celestial sphere when using the equatorial coordinate system. The other coordinate is the declination.-Explanation:...  of the ascending node	68.015 degrees
Argument of perigee	93.06 degrees
Instruments
Visible Sensors	1-meter panchromatic Panchromatic Panchromatic film is a type of black-and-white photographic film that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light. A panchromatic film therefore produces a realistic reproduction of a scene as it appears to the human eye. Almost all modern photographic film is panchromatic, but some types are...  and 4-meter multispectral

IKONOS is a commercial earth observation satellite

Earth observation satellite

Earth observation satellites are satellites specifically designed to observe Earth from orbit, similar to reconnaissance satellites but intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, meteorology, map making etc....

, and was the first to collect publicly available high-resolution imagery at 1- and 4-meter resolution. It offers multispectral

Multi-spectral image

A multispectral image is one that captures image data at specific frequencies across the electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths may be separated by filters or by the use of instruments that are sensitive to particular wavelengths, including light from frequencies beyond the visible light range,...

 (MS) and panchromatic

Panchromatic

Panchromatic film is a type of black-and-white photographic film that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light. A panchromatic film therefore produces a realistic reproduction of a scene as it appears to the human eye. Almost all modern photographic film is panchromatic, but some types are...

 (PAN) imagery. The IKONOS launch was called by John E. Pike

John E. Pike

John E. Pike is a national security analyst and director and founder of GlobalSecurity.org. An easily accessible pundit, he was active in opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, and International Traffic in Arms Regulations, and consulting on Near-Earth objects that are potential threats to the...

 “one of the most significant developments in the history of the space age”. IKONOS imagery began being sold on January 1, 2000.

It derived its name from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 term eikōn for image.

History

IKONOS was originated under the Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....

 Corporation as the Commercial Remote Sensing System (CRSS) satellite. On April 1994 Lockheed was granted one of the first licenses from the U.S. Department of Commerce for commercial satellite high-resolution imagery. On October 25, 1995 partner company Space Imaging received a license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to transmit telemetry from the satellite in the eight-gigahertz Earth Exploration Satellite Services band. Prior to launch, Space Imaging changed the name of the satellite to IKONOS. IKONOS comes from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 word for "image"

Two satellites were originally planned for operation. The launch of IKONOS-1 in 1999 failed when the payload fairing of the Athena rocket failed to separate, preventing the satellite from reaching orbit. IKONOS-2 was planned for launch in 2000, but was renamed IKONOS and was launched on September 24, 1999 from Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) at Vandenberg Air Force Base

Vandenberg Air Force Base

Vandenberg Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base, located approximately northwest of Lompoc, California. It is under the jurisdiction of the 30th Space Wing, Air Force Space Command ....

 in California. The imaging sensors are panchromatic

Panchromatic

Panchromatic film is a type of black-and-white photographic film that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light. A panchromatic film therefore produces a realistic reproduction of a scene as it appears to the human eye. Almost all modern photographic film is panchromatic, but some types are...

 and multispectral. This satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

 has a polar, circular, sun-synchronous 681-km orbit and both sensors have a swath width of 11 km. Its weight is 1600 pounds (720 kg).

In November 2000 Lockheed Martin received the "Best of What's New" Grand Award in the Aviation & Space category from Popular Science magazine. Space Imaging was acquired by ORBIMAGE in September 2005. The company was later renamed to GeoEye.

Spacecraft

IKONOS is a 3-axis stabilized spacecraft designed by Lockheed Martin. The design later became known as the LM900 satellite bus system. The satellite's altitude is measured by two star trackers and a sun sensor and controlled by four reaction wheels; location knowledge is provided by a GPS receiver. The design life is 7 years; S/C body size=1.83 m x 1.57 m (hexagonal configuration); S/C mass = 817 kg; power = 1.5 kW provided by 3 solar panels.

The LM900 spacecraft is a three-axis stabilized bus that is designed to carry scientific payloads in LEOs. It provides precision pointing on an ultra stable highly agile platform. Payloads for a variety of scientific and remote sensing applications may be accommodated including laser sensors, imagers, radar sensors, electro-optical and astronomical sensors, as well as planetary sensors. The LM900 bus shares a hardware heritage with Iridium, which is the basis for the LM700 bus.

Communications

IKONOS conducts telemetry

Telemetry

Telemetry is a technology that allows measurements to be made at a distance, usually via radio wave transmission and reception of the information. The word is derived from Greek roots: tele = remote, and metron = measure...

, tracking and control in the 8345.968-8346.032 MHz band (downlink) and 2025-2110 MHz band (uplink). Downlink data carrier operates in the 8025-8345 MHz band.

Optics & Detectors

IKONOS has a primary mirror aperture of 0.7 m (2.3 feet), and a folded optical focal length of 10 m (about 33 feet) using 5 mirrors. The main mirror features a honeycomb design to reduce mass.
The detectors at the focal plane include a pan-chromatic and a multi-spectral sensor, with 13500 pixels and 3375 pixels respectively (cross-track). Total instrument mass is 171 kg (377 pounds) and it uses 350 watts.

Spatial resolution

• 0.8 m panchromatic (1-m PAN)
• 4-meter multispectral (4-m MS)
• 1-meter pan-sharpened (1-m PS)

Spectral Resolution

Band	1-m PAN	4-m MS & 1-m PS
1 (Blue)	0.45-0.90 µm	0.445-0.516 µm
2 (Green)	*	0.506-0.595 µm
3 (Red)	*	0.632-0.698 µm
4 (Near IR)	*	0.757-0.853 µm

Temporal resolution

The revisit rate for IKONOS is 3 to 5 days off-nadir

Nadir

The nadir is the direction pointing directly below a particular location; that is, it is one of two vertical directions at a specified location, orthogonal to a horizontal flat surface there. Since the concept of being below is itself somewhat vague, scientists define the nadir in more rigorous...

 and 144 days for true-nadir.

Radiometric resolution

The sensor collects data with a 11-bit (0-2047) sensitivity and are delivered in an unsigned 16-bit (0-65535) data format. From time-to-time the data are rescaled down to 8-bit (0 - 255) to decrease file size. When this occurs much of the sensitivity of the data needed by Remote Sensing

Remote sensing

Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon, without making physical contact with the object. In modern usage, the term generally refers to the use of aerial sensor technologies to detect and classify objects on Earth by means of propagated signals Remote sensing...

 scientists is lost.

External links

• IKONOS page on the Geo-Eye website
• Private Eyes, a New York Times Magazine feature in anticipation of IKONOS launch