Collection Capacity: How Much a Satellite Can Image in a Day
How many square kilometres can one satellite collect each day, and why does that number matter more than revisit for the economics?
Chapter summary
Revisit tells how often a satellite can look at one place; collection capacity tells how much it can look at in total.
Key takeaways
- 1
A very-high-resolution satellite with a narrow swath of about 13–15 km, slewing between targets, collects perhaps a few thousand square kilometres of tasked imagery a day; in strip mode over large areas, much more.
- 2
A medium-resolution monitoring satellite scanning continuously with a 25 km swath over daylit land collects hundreds of thousands.
- 3
A SAR satellite in spotlight mode images small patches; in wide modes, tens of thousands of square kilometres.
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