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Japanese Mapping Satellite Fails to Provide Useful Images

posted by lxnyce on Thursday January 10, @08:11AM        Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the not-sushi-on-your-tongue dept.

From the All Points Blog summary : "The "Daichi" satellite went up about two years ago. Japan launched it to collect data to create maps of remote parts of the country. Today, the Geographical Survey Institute said that the images were blurry and could not be used for the detailed mapping planned. But the images won't go to waste - they'll be used as background data for land use determination and the like."

For a link to the official store, visit the All Points Blog website.

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• PALSAR

  (Score:2, Informative)

  by Anonymous Voxel on Thursday January 10, @09:56PM (#2134)

  While I'm far from an expert on the visible side of Daichi (a.k.a. ALOS, the Advanced Land Observing Satellite), the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument, PALSAR (Phased Array L-band SAR), has been a success in many senses. It has provided extremely good L-band imagery over many parts of the world, as well is the first to provide fully quad polarized SAR imagery, kicking off what will hopefully be a boom for SAR polarimetry over the next few years, especially with TerraSAR-X having an experimental quad polarized mode, and RADARSAT-2 waking up in orbit, who, one of the main features of the mission, is the fact that one of the regular modes is a quad polarized imaging mode.

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