Some five weeks after its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, GeoEye-1, the satellite developed by aerial and geospatial information provider GeoEye, has signaled back to Earth.
GeoEye-1 snapped the first location the satellite saw when the camera door was opened -- Kutztown University, located midway between Reading and Allentown, Penn. Viewed online, the image shows sharper detail than is typical of satellite work: The shot was collected at 0.41-meter ground resolution.
Academic buildings, parking lots, roads, athletic fields and the track-and-field facility were captured in the image. It was collected at 12:00 p.m. EDT on Oct. 7, 2008, while GeoEye-1 was moving north to south in a 423-mile-high orbit over the eastern seaboard, traveling 4.5 miles per second.
