Tags: Landsat, NASA, Google, Satellite Imagery
Publication: PCMag.com
Publication Date: 06/27/2013

The new global view in Maps and Earth. Image credit: Google

Google unveiled a new batch of satellite imagery for its mapping products, which eliminates clouds and provides clearer images. The change was inspired by NASA’s Blue Marble image of the Earth, which is based on data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, and provides a resolution of one kilometer per pixel.

Google extracted hundreds of terabytes of data from the government-owned Landsat 7 satellite for this improvement. However, as a result of previous Landsat 7 hardware failure, Google’s new imagery may include black stripes. While most of these stripes were removed by analyzing many different Landsat images, these interferences are still issues in some areas. Google plans to further improve the imagery with data from the recently launched Landsat 8 satellite.

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