* Astronomy

Since the early 1960s, super powerful spy satellites have been the stuff of the military and intelligence communities. Now two U.S. companies have launched commercial imaging satellites that offer the same sort of space-based images of the Earth to the public. One of these companies, GeoEye of Dulles, Va., launched a multi-million dollar satellite last year, and it's the highest-resolution commercial imaging satellite in the world.
From its vantage point of 425 miles in space, the 4,300-pound GeoEye-1 satellite orbits the Earth and focuses its powerful lens on the surface below, snapping electronic images that can resolve objects on the ground as small as 41 cm across. That's approximately the size of home plate on a baseball diamond. These images are typically processed and sold to the military for mapping and to companies like Google, which makes them available to the public through its platform Google Earth. (Because of federal regulations, the publicly-available images are slightly lower resolution -- approximately 50 cm).

Source

Researchers from Dulles, Va.-based GeoEye Systems Engineering will discuss the success of the worlds highest-resolution commercial imaging satellite that the company launched last year. The session will also preview the satellite GeoEye-2, which is expected to be launched around 2012 and would have a ground resolution twice as fine as GeoEye-1.

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GeoEye have recently obtained images of the pirated Saudi tanker as it was anchored off the Somali coast. You can see a selection of images on their website.

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A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket body that was launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on the 6th September, 2008,  for the GeoEye-1 Satellite mission,  is predicted to re-enter the Earths atmosphere on the 21st October, 2008 @ 11:18 GMT  ± 48 Hours

TLE Data

DELTA 2 RB
1 33332U 08042B   08291.33387704  .01959864  18478-5  52662-3 0  1062
2 33332 096.6277 002.5609 0134475 082.5992 279.0512 16.09353763  6357
1 33332U 08042B   08291.27171828  .01964692  18454-5  53275-3 0  1052
2 33332 096.6273 002.4989 0135239 082.8709 278.9344 16.09113316  6349
1 33332U 08042B   08291.14732765  .01798703  18404-5  50495-3 0  1044
2 33332 096.6307 002.3706 0136799 083.5471 278.2370 16.08476583  6326
1 33332U 08042B   08290.71174537  .01548709  00000-0  22351-3 0  1039
2 33332 096.6339 001.9410 0159033 086.3231 275.7446 16.06430142  6256
1 33332U 08042B   08290.58710772  .01867078  18190-5  54836-3 0  1031
2 33332 096.6262 001.8111 0144530 085.7382 276.3534 16.06454888  6230

Inclination    96.63°
Period: 90.18  
Apogee:  400  
Perigee: 166
Revolution Number    702
Predicted  Location:    16.7° N, 165.9° E

Satellite Captures First Image
This bird's-eye view of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania was the first image ever seen by the GeoEye-1, the world's highest-resolution commercial satellite sponsored by Google, when it opened its camera door earlier this week.

The 4,300-pound satellite collected the image at noon EDT on October 7 while moving from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, or 4.5 miles per second. The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 centimeters -- close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye's vice president of communications and marketing.

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