LOOKINGSTRAIGHT DOWN
A satellite's view of a river delta, tilted towards the horizon. Scrolling straightens the view until it looks straight down.
[ 01 ] WHAT WE DO
HALF A METREPER PIXEL
NADIR flies six small satellites in one sun-synchronous orbit, 525 kilometres up. Each circles the Earth about fifteen times a day and crosses the equator at 10:30 local time, so a place is lit the same way every visit. We point them, clean the light and deliver the ground as it is: straight down, half a metre per pixel.
No stock photos, no renders of rockets. What we sell is a grid of numbers per square metre, and on this page you'll see how those numbers turn into forests, fields, rivers and ice.
[ TASK A PASS ]- ALTITUDE
- 525 KM
- ORBIT PERIOD
- 95 MIN
- GROUND SPEED
- ≈ 7.0 KM/S
- SWATH
- 12 KM
- BANDS
- PAN + 4 MS + SWIR
- REVISIT
- UP TO 4× A DAY
[ 02 ] RESOLUTION
30 M → 50 CM
- 30 M
A field is one pixel. The Landsat standard: enough to count fields, not to see them.
- 10 M
The field has a shape. Sentinel-2's sharpest bands stop here.
- 3 M
The pivot has an arm, and the arm casts a shadow.
- 1 M
The arm has towers. The towers leave ruts.
- 50 CM
The crop has rows. This is our native resolution, four times a day.
[ 03 ] BANDS
ONE FOREST,FIVE BANDS
[ 04 ] SCENES
RECENTPASSES
Four places from this month's downlinks. Each one is shown in the band that tells its story best: the delta in near-infrared, the desert farms in true colour, the fire scar in short-wave infrared.
[ ALL SCENES (4) ][ 05 ] CONSTELLATION
SIX SATELLITES,ONE ORBIT
Spaced sixty degrees apart in the same plane, they pass over any point on Earth up to four times between morning and evening, always from straight above.
Sun-synchronous orbits at this height are inclined about 97° to the equator, so the orbit plane turns with the Sun and every pass over a place happens at the same local time.