Sansa launches SA satellite imagery mosaic

Engineering News reports that the Earth Observation division of the South African National Space Agency (Sansa) has released Spot 5 Mosaic 2011 - the latest edition of its mosaic of satellite imagery of the whole of South Africa, assembled from imagery taken by the Spot 5 Earth observation satellite between January 24 and December 20 last year.

According to Sansa Earth Observation production manager Natalie Diemer, a total of 952 images were acquired, mostly during the winter when cloud cover is minimal over most of the country. "Cloud cover is always a problem," she said, adding that the mosaic can be used for many purposes - "housing and urban planning, agriculture (especially determining crop yields), water and, particularly, dam monitoring, environmental monitoring, forestry monitoring, and so on."

476 colour images and 476 black and white images were combined to create 476 2.5m resolution true colour scenes, which were then "mosaicked" to create the image of the entire country and then divided into squares, called tiles. The entire mosaic is supplied on a single disc. "We send out about 30 discs," Diemer told Engineering News. Each province gets a disk, with the data for its territory; others go to the Presidency, government departments and government agencies such as South African National Parks.

Read the full article on www.engineeringnews.co.za.