Comparison of commercial high-resolution satellite imagery

High-resolution satellite imagery first became commercially available in the mid 1990's with the marketing of Russian KFA-1000 two-meter resolution imagery, taken by the military Kometa film return satellite. The Russian firm SOVINFORMSPUTNIX next began a joint collaboration with the US firm Aerial Images, Inc to market current and archived two-meter resolution imagery over the Internet. With the successful launch of the Ikonos-2 satellite in late 1999 one-meter resolution imagery became commercially available. This paper compares an example of KFA-1000 panchromatic imagery with a pan-sharpened multispectral image from the Ikonos satellite of the same geographic area. The military utility of both types of imagery are also discussed.