The satellite that caught images of two objects possibly linked to MH370
The satellite which caught the images of two objects, possibly debris from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, has been identified as American-owned WorldView-2, The Sydney Morning Herald reported today.
WorldView-2, it said, was launched on October 8, 2009 and provides an imagery at a resolution of about 50cm. The satellite also takes a new image every 1.1 days or 1 day, 2 hours and 24 minutes.
US satellite company DigitalGlobe owns five satellites, including WorldView-2, which is reported to weigh 2800kg, operates at an altitude of 770km and can collect almost 1 million square kilometres of imagery every day.
The company told the media on Friday that it was their satellite that provided the images, captured on March 16, to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).
"We have been informed by an Australian government official that it was our imagery Prime Minister Abbott referred to in his recent comments," the company was quoted to have said in a statement.
"Working with our customers, DigitalGlobe continues to task our satellites to collect imagery of a wide area that includes the waters around where the possible debris was identified."
However, DigitalGlobe refused to reveal whether the objects were spotted by its own analysts or government analysts who use the satellite service.
It was reported that the two objects were 24 metres and five metres long respectively, and appeared to be floating in water which was several thousand meters deep.
SMH reported that DigitalGlobe is the parent company of Tomnod, which has been releasing satellite imagery to about three million people to scour through to locate MH370.
But it has not revealed if it would release the imagery of the current search area to the public on Tomnod.
"We're working to confirm further details," DigitalGlobe said.
"In the meantime, other customers including the US government and other governments have been receiving our imagery for their own search efforts.
"Given the extraordinary size of the current search area, the lengthy duration of the analysis effort was to be expected," a spokesman was quoted as saying.
According to the Australian daily, the company's five high-resolution satellites capture more than 3 million square kilometres of earth imagery every day.
"This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look," the spokesman said.
It was also reported that several Australian government agencies used DigitalGlobe's services to access imagery from their satellites. – March 21, 2014.
