SAN FRANCISCO – Maxar Technologies unveiled a platform to simplify and speed up access to high-resolution Earth imagery.
The Maxar Geospatial Platform (MGP), demonstrated on the Esri User Conference in San Diego this week, offers access to archival and current imagery online and thru an application programming interface.
“It revolutionizes the best way our customers can access and buy imagery,” Sid Dixit, Maxar vp of engineering and product, told “For instance, using MGP Express, you possibly can simply swipe through your bank card and buy the imagery without having to call or email Maxar. It gets directly delivered to you.”
In the longer term, MGP will allow customers to task satellites and tap into advanced analytics.
Three Versions
Maxar announced three MGP products on July 10.
- MGP Xpress is designed for most of the people. Customers can browse Maxar’s 125-petabyte archive, purchase and download images.
- MGP Pro, which requires a subscription, provides access to imagery collected each day, Maxar’s basemap, archive and other geospatial data products.
- MGP API provides developers with a software development kits and tools to embed the API in customer Apps.
For now, a select group of Maxar customers have access to MGP.
“It would be available for broader adoption later this 12 months,” Dixit said.
Business and Government Applications
Once tasking is on the market, an MGP customer focused on disaster relief could task Maxar’s constellation to acquire imagery within the wake of a hurricane or other event.
“They will task a satellite to get the most recent and best imagery, which can allow our customers to satisfy their use case right from their workflows and applications,” Dixit said.
A world defense or intelligence agency could, for example, tap into MGP analytics capabilities to count military object or to watch various sorts of activity.
Initially, MGP will offer access to Maxar Worldview satellites. Once Maxar Legion satellites are operational, imagery from that constellation also might be available through MGP.
“MGP will enable experienced analysts, technical developers and occasional users of geospatial data to equally leverage Maxar data for mapping, monitoring and evaluation of their workflows,” Dan Jablonsky, Maxar president and CEO, said in an announcement.