Three million km² updated in Mapbox Satellite

Camilla Mahon
Tue, 26 Apr 2016 09:30:00 -0400

We just pushed three million square kilometers of new imagery into Mapbox Satellite. Last year, we talked about our purchase of this high-res data from DigitalGlobe. A few weeks ago, I posted about one of the ways we choose where to improve Mapbox Satellite. Today, all Mapbox users can take advantage of a massive refresh that updates high-priority urban areas worldwide and improves coverage in hundreds of other spots.

The maps below show a few examples of this fresh 30 cm imagery – the highest resolution satellite imagery available in the market. Check out our Instagram feed and come back to the blog in the next few weeks as we show you some of our favorite updates. You’ll be seeing high-res data captured within the last few months by DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 satellite. We’ll also be sharing engineering details on how we’ve optimized our imagery processing pipelines to support large scale updates.

Cape Town, South Africa, is home to one of the world's busiest ports and some of the world's most avid soccer fans. Cape Town Stadium, built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, can be seen just west of the port.

The green area in this image of Tokyo is Chiyoda City, home to the imperial palace. Just to the east, the Sumida River winds through the city's dense development. We refreshed about a terapixel (one trillion pixels) of Japan alone in this update.

Stockholm, Sweden, straddles Riddarfjärden bay. The city was founded in 1252 on Stadhsholmen, the triangular island in the center of this view.

The River Thames flows through London. The London Eye, a 135 meter (440 ft) Ferris wheel, can be seen casting a shadow onto the water.