Tag: Remote Sensing
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Satellite Revisit Time vs. Actual Monitoring Frequency
A satellite may be able to revisit your site every few days, yet the interval between usable images can be much longer. Clouds, acquisition schedules, viewing conditions and delivery requirements all affect when a new observation becomes useful. For monitoring projects, the key question is not simply how often a satellite can see the target,…
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The In-Orbit Remote Sensing Pipeline
Key Insight An in-orbit processing pipeline essentially takes a ground-based data center apart and fits its functions inside a satellite. Each stage uses the computing hardware best suited to its task: FPGAs for rule-based processing, NPUs for AI inference, and CPUs for scheduling. Models that are “good enough” trade complexity for real-time performance. To assess…
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How AI Detects Flood Changes Across Optical and SAR Images With Few Training Pairs
In brief: Instead of separately mapping water in pre- and post-flood images and then overlaying the results, the method first maps water features from optical and SAR imagery into a more consistent semantic space, then directly identifies where water conditions have changed. More importantly, it does not require large numbers of real flood-change labels: it…
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China’s AI-GeoMapping System Guides 400-Square-Kilometer Gobi Survey
China’s AI-GeoMapping system has guided 400 square kilometers of 1:50,000-scale regional geological mapping in northern Alxa, Inner Mongolia, where fused remote-sensing, aeromagnetic and geochemical data helped field teams identify concealed intrusions, faults beneath sediment cover and new mineral-prospecting clues. The Hohhot Natural Resources Comprehensive Survey Center of the China Geological Survey reported on Sept. 24…
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China Successfully Launches Remote-Sensing Satellite 40 Group 04 on Long March 6A Rocket
China launched the Remote-Sensing Satellite No. 40 Group 04 at 4:46 p.m. Beijing Time on September 24, 2026, using a Long March 6A rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. The satellites entered their planned orbit and will primarily conduct electromagnetic environment detection and related technology experiments. Chinese authorities did not disclose the number of…
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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…