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Jitian News | Three Ports in One Frame: Non-Track Imaging Captures Australia's Iron Ore Export Hub at Once
2025-08-27
China is the world's largest steel producer: in 2024, crude steel production is about 1 billion tons, accounting for 53% of the global total. Domestic iron ore production in 2024 is 1.042 billion tons, while 1.237 billion tons still need to be imported from abroad (with an external dependency of about 54%). Among the 1.237 billion tons of imported iron ore, Australia supplies 743 million tons, accounting for 60.1%, ranking first (China Steel News Network). As important iron ore transport ports in Australia, the high-resolution and high-frequency observations of Port Dampier, Port Walcott, and Port Hedland are of great significance. On August 6, 2025, the Jitian Star A-03 satellite used its unique non-along-track imaging technology, adopting a non-along-track imaging method with an angle of about 70° between the satellite push-scan direction and the orbit, to capture a length of 236 km, achieving simultaneous acquisition of three targets in one pass.
Figure 1 Non-along-track imaging mode push-scan strip
Figure 2 Port Dampier
Figure 3 Port Walcott
Figure 4 Port Hedland
Port Dampier, Port Walcott, and Port Hedland are geographically important, but their maximum lateral distance is about 200 km. Satellites with ground resolution better than 3m generally have a swath width of less than 100 km. Using conventional push-scan mode requires multiple observations to cover the area, which affects actual observation efficiency.
Figure 5 Retrieval Result 1
Figure 6 Retrieval Result 2
Users searching for existing related conventional push-scan data with resolution better than 3m may need one to two weeks for single or dual satellite joint observations to achieve clear coverage of all targets (retrieval status shown in Figures 5 and 6). The Jitian Star A-03 satellite has non-along-track one-pass curve imaging technology, which can accomplish the task of acquiring all three targets in one pass with a small swath width of 15 km, as shown in Figure 7. Actual shooting results prove that the overall efficiency of Jitian Star A-03 for specific target observation has surpassed that of single satellites with larger swath widths using conventional push-scan imaging, and even exceeds the acquisition capability of dual satellite joint observations.
Figure 7 Jitian Star A-03 satellite non-along-track imaging mode shooting result
In summary, the non-along-track imaging mode can break through the limitation of traditional push-scan imaging mode, which can only acquire images in the north-south direction, in tasks where customers want to quickly obtain key observation targets. It performs very well in efficiently acquiring data. 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.