Question

List several optical spaceborne sensors that can achieve very high spatial resolution (≤ 1 m). If a panchromatic band is available, what is the relationship between its spatial size and the spatial size of multispectral bands?

Answer 1

The List of optical space borne sensors :

• Cartosat-2A(panchromatic Band of <1m)
• Worldview-2(Spatial resolution of 0.46m-0.52m)
• Pleiades 1 and 2(spatial resolution of 0.7m)
• EROSB(Spatial resolution of 0.7m)
• QuickBird(panchromatic band’s spatial resolution of 0.6m)
• IKONOS-2(panchromatic band’s spatial resolution of 1m)
• ORBVIEW-3(panchromatic band’s spatial resolution of 1m)
• Geoeye-1(panchromatic band’s spatial resolution of 0.41m)

If panchromatic band is available, compared to the multispectral band, the panchromatic bands have very high signals. This capability of panchromatic band makes us to identify or see even a small region. Therefore, Panchromatic has a wide band with lower spatial resolution, which is 50% less than that of multispectral bands. This helps us to see in more finer way.

                For example, the panchromatic band of Landsat has a spatial resolution (pixel size) of 1m(or <=1m),which is smaller than the 2m-3m pixel size of its multispectral bands.