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Jitian News | Case Study of Non-Orbiting Single-Pass Cross-Track Imaging Business - Non-Orbiting Shooting of the Rio Grande at the US-Mexico Border
2025-08-22
The Rio Grande is not only the natural boundary between the US and Mexico but also the core area for a series of issues including water resources, migration routes, and border security between the two countries. In recent years, this river has faced prolonged drought and a sharp reduction in flow, with studies showing a decrease in water volume of about 30%, threatening the water supply security for millions of residents and agricultural production; meanwhile, the cross-border water transfer treaty between the US and Mexico has been poorly implemented, leading to frequent conflicts over agricultural and urban water use in the border region. Additionally, some river sections have experienced ecological degradation and habitat loss due to dam construction and overuse of water resources. More complexly, the Rio Grande's banks are also hotspots for border walls and migrant crossings, where changes in water levels and river morphology directly affect border security and personal risk.
Therefore, relevant imagery data is urgently needed for water resource scheduling, ecological protection, as well as cross-border management and security decision-making. Users hope to quickly obtain complete coverage and consistent quality remote sensing images to rapidly assess river course and water body changes, monitor the ecological status along the banks, and provide intuitive evidence for subsequent governance and research.
Achieving basic coverage of the target through multi-satellite joint observation may require more than a month (retrieval status shown in Figures 1 and 2). Below are examples of user self-retrieved historical high-resolution conventional push-scan satellite imaging data:
Figure 1 Example of multi-satellite historical image retrieval 1
Figure 2 Example of a certain satellite's historical image retrieval 2
To quickly obtain consistent images covering a complete strip-shaped target, traditional methods usually require image screening and processing of images from different times, resolutions, and satellites, which greatly limits the effectiveness and timeliness of data application.
Users have learned that our company's satellite features non-along-track single-pass curve imaging technology, which differs from the traditional push-scan mode that requires multiple passes and multiple scene stitching to cover the complete target. It only needs a single orbit to obtain continuous and complete strip-shaped target images. This technology not only greatly shortens the acquisition cycle and ensures consistent spatial resolution of images but also significantly improves data usability.
To meet user needs, our company plans non-along-track imaging based on the strip-shaped target, as shown in Figure 3. The Jitian Star A-01 satellite has a single scene width of 15 km, with both panchromatic and multispectral spatial resolutions of 3 m. When the imaging strip and the satellite ground track angle reach 50°, only one pass is needed to cover a 535 km long strip-shaped target area.
Figure 3 Example of Jitian Star A-01 satellite non-along-track push-scan imaging
From the perspective of data acquisition costs: after the remote sensing satellite completes imaging on the same day, data must be received and downloaded through ground stations, which incurs corresponding data transmission fees. At the same time, after satellite data transmission is completed, data stitching and other preprocessing operations are required, which also require labor costs. Currently, the market price for single orbit data transmission service ranges from about 500 yuan (domestic stations) to 1000 yuan (foreign stations).
For the strip-shaped target image acquisition task in the above case, traditional push-scan satellites usually require at least 13 data transmissions to complete all data transfer, while Jitian Star only needs one orbit data transmission to achieve the same goal; moreover, data preprocessing under the traditional push-scan mode requires stitching at least 26 scenes from different orbits, increasing the difficulty of stitching and labor input. Calculated from the remote sensing data transmission and preprocessing stages, the non-along-track imaging mode not only improves data acquisition efficiency by dozens of times but also saves costs by dozens of times for strip-shaped target acquisition.
In summary, for such scenarios, conventional methods may require a longer time for coverage, while non-along-track imaging can achieve coverage of the target area with only one orbit, significantly improving efficiency. In addition, the non-along-track imaging mode can also provide better observation efficiency in typical application fields such as river management, pipeline network monitoring, transportation, and border control.
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