Tag: Remote Sensing
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Can Optical Satellites Keep Tracking Floods When Clouds Block the View?
In brief: Landsat and Sentinel-2 can capture flood details well, but they are most vulnerable to the very condition that often accompanies major flooding: cloud cover. Rather than trying to generate a visually plausible cloud-free optical image, this study directly reconstructs whether the surface beneath the clouds is water or non-water. The researchers combined Harmonized…
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From Imaging to Intelligence: How Smart Remote-Sensing Satellites Are Changing the Market
Several smart remote-sensing satellites have recently been launched in China and other countries, entering a rapidly expanding applications market and attracting growing industry attention. But what does it mean for a remote-sensing satellite to become “smart”? What benefits could onboard intelligence provide, and how might it help satellite operators reach new markets and deliver services…
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Can SAR Map Floods Without Manual Labels or Threshold Tuning?
In brief: Conventional SAR-based flood mapping often runs into two obstacles: thresholds must be adjusted repeatedly by hand, while supervised learning requires large volumes of labeled data. This paper proposes Felz-CNN, also known as the adaptive unsupervised Felz-CNN segment system (AUFCS). The method first uses Felzenszwalb superpixels to divide a SAR image into many internally…
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Russian Satellite Imagery Reportedly Supports Iranian Targeting of U.S. Bases
Russian Earth observation satellites are providing imagery to Iranian military forces to support targeting of U.S. and allied installations across the Middle East, according to defense intelligence assessments reported on September 17, 2026. The reported cooperation involves synthetic aperture radar and high-resolution optical imagery used to refine information on fixed military sites, air-defense positions and…
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What Really Caused Pakistan’s 2022 Floods: Extreme Rainfall, Snowmelt, or Glacial Lake Outburst Floods?
In brief: Published in Remote Sensing of Environment, this study does more than use Sentinel-1 data to map Pakistan’s catastrophic 2022 floods. It seeks to answer three broader questions: How much of the country was flooded? Why was the disaster so severe? And was it worse than the major flood of 2010? The authors developed…
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China Launches Nine Satellites on Kinetica 1, Including Orbital AI and 5G Testbeds
China launched nine satellites aboard a Kinetica 1 Y18 rocket from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone at 12:03 p.m. Beijing Time on September 20, 2026. The satellites entered their planned orbits, marking the 16th flight of the Kinetica 1 launch vehicle. The mission carried the Qinling-01 and Qinling-02 satellites, Pujiang-4, PEGA-SUS1, Diting-01 Group…
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China Launches Four PIESAT-2 Radar Satellites With Onboard Data Processing
China launched four PIESAT-2 synthetic aperture radar satellites on September 19, expanding a commercial Earth-observation constellation designed for high-resolution, all-weather monitoring. A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 6:50 p.m. Beijing Time and placed the PIESAT-2 13–16 satellites into their planned orbits. The four satellites belong to Zhuzhou…
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China Launches Tianyi-51 and Tianyi-52 Satellites on Kuaizhou-11 Rocket
At 10:40 a.m. Beijing time on September 17, 2026, China launched the Tianyi-51 and Tianyi-52 satellites aboard a Kuaizhou-11 Y3 rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Both satellites entered their planned orbits, completing the mission successfully. The satellites form a commercial, mid-inclination interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) pair designed to monitor changes in the…
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Pinglu Canal Officially Opens to Shipping: Satellite Images Capture China’s Project of the Century
China’s 134.2-kilometer Pinglu Canal officially opened to navigation on September 16, 2026, creating a direct waterway between the Xijiang River system and the Beibu Gulf. Satellite imagery released by the China Centre for Resources Satellite Data and Application provides a corridor-wide view of the RMB 72.7 billion project and records the construction of new channels,…
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Vega-C Launches FLEX and Sentinel-3C on Dual Earth Observation Mission (Video)
A Vega C rocket launched the FLEX and Copernicus-3C satellites from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on Sept. 14, 2026 at 9:21 p.m. EDT (10:21 p.m. local time in Kourou and 0121 GMT on Sept. 15). Credit: ESA Europe’s Vega-C rocket launched ESA’s FLEX research satellite and the European Union’s Copernicus Sentinel-3C environmental monitoring…