German Radar Satellite Lifts Off Tonight

Posted by kdawson on Sunday June 20, 2010 @07:12AM from the ready-for-my-closeup dept.

2Y9D57 writes "Germany's new TanDEM-X radar satellite is scheduled to lift off from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 04:15 Berlin time on 21 June — that's 10:14 pm Eastern today (20 June). Flying in close formation with its twin satellite, TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X will generate the most consistent and highest-resolution digital elevation map ever of the Earth — 12m = 40ft. pixel pitch. It will take three years to image all 150 million square kilometers (58 million square miles), in the process generating more than 350 TB of raw data. Here's where to go as the time approaches for live streaming."

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Another proprietary dataset? by chrb · 2010-06-20 07:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

Unfortunately, despite being partly publically funded by the German taxpayer, it appears the complete dataset will be considered proprietary for the commercial exploitation of Infoterra GmbH.