Optical sensor, 0.9 m

Colour imagery for anything a person would recognise from above: new buildings, damaged roofs, full car parks, stockpiles and field boundaries.

Aerial photograph of a single circular irrigated field with a wheel track, farm roads and a dark green crop — Aerial photograph at 0.6 m. Perihel optical is 0.9 m, so the pivot arm and its wheel track are still visible. Imagery: USDA Farm Service Agency, NAIP, 17 July 2023 (public domain). Example standing in for a Perihel optical product.

Specification

PH-O payload on the Perihel standard bus, orbit 525 km sun-synchronous.

Ground sample distance	0.9 m panchromatic, 3.6 m colour (nadir)
Swath width	14 km at nadir
Spectral bands	Panchromatic 450 to 800 nm; blue 450 to 510, green 510 to 580, red 655 to 690, near infrared 780 to 920 nm
Radiometric resolution	12 bit, signal to noise 110 at albedo 0.3
Geolocation accuracy	5 m CE90 without ground control, 2.5 m with
Pointing	Up to ±30° off nadir (±45° on request)
Revisit, one satellite	3 days at ±30° pointing
Daily capacity	Up to 48,000 km² per satellite
Local overpass time	10:30 descending
Imaging modes	Single scene, strip, stereo pair, area mosaic
On-board storage	2 TB, compressed 2.5:1
Downlink	X-band, 800 Mbit/s

Products and formats

Every scene is delivered as a cloud-optimised GeoTIFF with a STAC item. Levels are cumulative: you can order L1B and reprocess to L2 later.

Product levels
Level	Content	Format	Delivery after downlink
L1B	Radiometrically corrected, sensor geometry, RPC model	COG GeoTIFF + RPB	25 min
L1C	Orthorectified, top-of-atmosphere reflectance, pan-sharpened option	COG GeoTIFF	40 min
L2A	Surface reflectance, cloud and shadow mask, haze removed	COG GeoTIFF + mask	60 min
L3	Seamless mosaic of a region, cloud-free composite	COG, tiled XYZ on request	Within 24 h

Example products

Aerial photograph of a circular field at 0.6 m — Aerial, 0.6 m. Imagery: USDA FSA, NAIP, 2023 (public domain).

The same area at 10 m resolution, blurry, the pivot is a dark disc — The same field from Sentinel-2 at 10 m, for scale: the disc is there, the wheel track is not. Imagery: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025).

Resolution and revisit

Revisit of a mid-latitude point improves with every satellite you add to the plane. See the coverage page for the ground tracks.

Revisit by fleet size
Satellites	Revisit
1	72 h
3	24 h
6	12 h
12	6 h

Try the coverage calculator

Typical uses

Insurance and claims: Roof condition and visible damage before and after an event, matched to policy addresses.
Construction and infrastructure: Progress against plan, stockpile volumes from stereo pairs, new access roads.
Land administration: Parcel boundaries, unregistered buildings, field-level land use.
Defence and security: Dated, repeatable imagery of facilities under per-customer export licences.

Sample delivery

Each scene arrives with a STAC item that any STAC client reads. Query it through our API or find it next to the data in your own bucket.

Delivered item, abbreviated

{
  "type": "Feature",
  "stac_version": "1.0.0",
  "id": "PH-OPT-20250728-173012-0412",
  "collection": "perihel-optical-l2a",
  "properties": {
"datetime": "2025-07-28T17:29:31Z",
    "perihel:level": "L2A",
    "gsd": 0.9,
    "eo:cloud_cover": 3.1,
    "view:off_nadir": 11.4,
    "proj:epsg": 32614,
    "perihel:task_id": "TSK-482913"
  },
  "assets": {
    "data": { "href": "s3://your-bucket/perihel/perihel-optical-l2a/PH-OPT-20250728-173012-0412.tif",
              "type": "image/tiff; application=geotiff; profile=cloud-optimized" },
    "metadata": { "href": "s3://your-bucket/perihel/perihel-optical-l2a/PH-OPT-20250728-173012-0412.json" }
  }
}

Questions about optical

Task a optical satellite

Tell us the area and the revisit you need. An engineer replies with orbit, sensor and fee.

Request a quote