Which Satellite Imagery Should You Buy? Matching Sensors to Applications

Summary

There is no single right answer. The sensor that suits your project depends on how small the objects are that you need to see, which wavelengths carry your signal, how often you need a fresh capture, and how much ground you have to cover. Those four constraints usually pick the sensor for you.

• Finest detail: WorldView-3, 30 cm native, with super-resolution enhancement to 15 cm.
• Mineral exploration: WorldView-3 SWIR, 8 SWIR bands in the 1.0 to 2.5 μm range, which separate clay, sulfate and iron-oxide signatures.
• Fine spectral discrimination: Wyvern Dragonette, 23 to 32 bands at 18 to 35 nm spectral resolution.
• Cost per km²: JILIN-1 50 cm, where 50 cm is enough detail.
• Frequent revisit: WorldView Legion at daily, SuperView Neo every 2 days, JILIN-1 with 60+ satellites.
• Agriculture: WorldView-2, 8 bands including Red Edge, which responds to chlorophyll before stress is visible in RGB.
• Large-area mapping: JILIN-1 75 cm, 150 km swath.

Start With the Constraint, Not the Sensor

Most people approach this backwards. They ask which satellite is best, get a list of specifications, and are no closer to a decision.

The faster route is to work out which constraint actually binds on your project. Usually only one does.

If you need to identify individual vehicles, resolution binds and everything else is negotiable. If you are mapping alteration mineralogy, spectral coverage binds and 30 cm panchromatic detail is beside the point. If you are tracking construction fortnightly, revisit binds. If you are mapping a state, swath width and price per km² bind together, and 30 cm imagery will bankrupt the project long before it finishes.

The sections below are organised by constraint rather than by satellite.

Finest Detail

WorldView-3 resolves more than anything else commercially available.

• 30 cm native resolution
• Super-resolution enhancement to 15 cm
• Geolocation accuracy of 5 m CE90 without ground control points

That level of detail separates individual vehicles, small infrastructure elements and larger equipment, which 50 cm imagery renders as ambiguous blobs. It suits defence and intelligence work, infrastructure inspection, detailed urban mapping, construction monitoring on high-value projects, and archaeology.

It also costs the most per km², so it rewards a tightly drawn area of interest. Buying 30 cm over a whole lease when you only need it over the plant is a common and expensive mistake.

Mineral Exploration

For geology, the shortwave infrared bands on WorldView-3 do the work that panchromatic resolution cannot.

• 8 SWIR bands covering roughly 1.0 to 2.5 μm
• Detects mineralogy invisible to RGB sensors
• Penetrates thin cloud, smoke and haze

Those bands pick up the diagnostic absorption features of clay minerals, sulfates and carbonates, which is how hydrothermal alteration gets mapped from orbit. Alteration is an indicator rather than proof of a deposit, but it narrows a large licence area to a ranked target list before any ground team is mobilised.

The mineral exploration guide covers the method in more depth, including which mineral groups separate cleanly and what the technique cannot do. The WorldView-3 alteration mapping case study has the band ratio formulations and classification workflow.

Fine Spectral Discrimination

Where multispectral sensors sample the spectrum at 4 to 16 points, hyperspectral instruments sample it continuously. The Wyvern Dragonette series sits in this category.

• Dragonette-001: 23 bands, 500 to 800 nm
• Dragonette-002 and 003: 32 bands, 445 to 880 nm
• Spectral resolution of 18 to 35 nm

Continuous coverage detects differences that fall between the bands of a multispectral sensor: early disease indicators in crops, specific pollutants in water, material identification. It suits research, water quality analysis and pollution monitoring more than routine mapping.

Cost per Square Kilometre

JILIN-1 50 cm is the volume option.

• 50 cm resolution
• 4 multispectral bands
• Large constellation, so archive availability is good

For a great many jobs, 50 cm is sufficient: buildings, infrastructure change, land use classification, field-level agriculture. The saving over 30 cm often pays for more frequent monitoring or a larger footprint, which is usually worth more to a project than the extra detail would have been. Current per-km² rates for each tier are in the satellite imagery cost guide.

Frequent Revisit

When you need the same location repeatedly, constellation size matters more than any individual satellite’s specifications.

WorldView Legion has 6 satellites at 30 cm with daily revisit, weighted toward high-demand areas.

SuperView Neo has 4 satellites at 30 cm, revisiting every 2 days at mid-latitudes.

JILIN-1 runs 60+ satellites at 50 cm and 75 cm, giving multiple passes per day in many places.

For monitoring, consistency between captures usually beats maximum resolution. A regular series at a stable view angle supports change detection far better than occasional sharper images taken from wherever the satellite happened to be. Making captures from different sensors comparable is a processing problem, which is covered below.

Agriculture and Vegetation

WorldView-2 carries 8 multispectral bands, and the one that matters for crops is Red Edge.

• Red Edge band, sensitive to chlorophyll content
• 50 cm resolution, enough for field-level assessment
• Coastal Blue band, which improves atmospheric correction
• Yellow band, which helps discriminate vegetation types

Red Edge responds to plant stress before it is visible in RGB or standard 4-band imagery, which is the difference between intervening and documenting. The red edge guide covers the physics and the index formulations.

Urban Planning and Infrastructure

SuperView Neo balances detail against update frequency for development monitoring.

• 30 cm resolution
• 4 bands, RGB plus NIR
• 4-satellite constellation
• Wide swath for efficient area coverage

Rapidly developing urban areas need both detail and currency, and SuperView Neo is usually the cheaper way to get both than tasking a single high-resolution satellite repeatedly.

Disaster Response

WorldView Legion responds fastest.

• 6 satellites, so most locations can be reached quickly
• 30 cm for damage assessment
• Daily revisit to track an evolving situation
• Enough imaging capacity to cover a large affected area

In an emergency, time to first capture dominates every other consideration. A constellation reaches an arbitrary location sooner than any single satellite can.

Large-Area Mapping

JILIN-1 75 cm covers ground faster than anything else in the catalogue.

• 150 km swath, roughly six times wider than most high-resolution satellites
• 50+ satellites
• 75 cm resolution

Wide swath plus a large constellation means regional and national mapping finishes in days rather than months. It suits land cover assessment, forestry, watershed management and national infrastructure inventory.

Satellite, Aerial or Drone?

Sometimes the answer is not a satellite at all. Aerial survey resolves finer and drone survey finer still, but both need aircraft, crew, airspace approval and a weather window, and neither scales to a whole region cheaply. Satellite wins on area, on repeat coverage, and on being able to buy a capture over somewhere you cannot easily fly. The drone versus aerial versus satellite comparison works through where each one stops making sense.

Choosing, in Order

1. Resolution. What is the smallest object you must identify? That sets the floor.
2. Spectral bands. Is your signal in the visible range, or does it need Red Edge, SWIR or continuous hyperspectral coverage?
3. Revisit. One capture, or a time series? A series constrains which constellations qualify.
4. Area. A single site, or a region? Swath and per-km² price start to dominate above a few hundred km².
5. Archive or tasking. Does an existing capture answer the question, or do you need a new one on a specified date?
6. Processing. Are you receiving something analysis-ready, or budgeting time to correct it yourself?

Ordering and Delivery

You can search every sensor above in one place at Pera Portal: draw or upload an area of interest, compare what is available across providers, see the price per km² on each result, and order only the footprint you need.

Delivery is where multi-sensor projects tend to come apart. Captures from different satellites disagree with each other, in band positions, view geometry and radiometry, so a time series assembled from several of them can show change that is an artefact of the instrument.

Every order runs through the same chain before it reaches you: ingest, co-registration, ground control and ortho, pansharpening, atmospheric correction, cloud and shadow masking, seamline optimisation, harmonisation and QC, with nothing manual between stages. That is the Legato process. It means sensors that disagree are made to behave like one instrument, and imagery arrives analysis-ready in under 24 hours.

For ongoing monitoring, talk to us about setting up a recurring capture programme rather than ordering ad hoc.

Common Questions

How recent is commercial satellite imagery? The freshest archive imagery is typically hours to days old, depending on the satellite, your location and cloud cover. If you need a specific date, task a new capture rather than searching the archive.

Can satellite imagery see through clouds? Optical imagery cannot. SWIR bands penetrate thin cloud, haze and smoke, but not solid cover. For that you need radar, which images through cloud and at night.

What is the practical difference between 30 cm and 50 cm? 30 cm delivers roughly 2.8 times more pixels over the same ground. In practice it is the difference between counting vehicles and knowing that something is parked there.

How often can I get imagery of the same location? Most locations can be imaged daily to weekly. Mid-latitudes do better than equatorial or polar regions, and revisit depends on the constellation rather than the individual satellite.

Is Google Earth imagery the same as commercial satellite imagery? No. Google Earth mixes commercial satellite imagery, aerial photography and other sources, often months or years old and processed to look good rather than to measure accurately. Commercial imagery is current, radiometrically consistent and carries the metadata technical work requires. The Google Earth comparison covers the differences.

Can I order SuperView imagery directly? Yes. SuperView Neo is in the archive alongside every other sensor listed here, searchable and priced per km² at portal.geopera.com, with specifications on the SuperView Neo sensor page.