ICEYE has engaged in a contract with the NOAA to support the monitoring and response to environmental hazards in the maritime sector.
With this partnership, ICEYE will provide NOAA with radar satellite imagery to evaluate the impact of different environmental hazards in near-real time including oil spills, large-scale illegal fishing operations and ocean conditions related to the accumulation of marine debris. In addition, NOAA is looking into using ICEYE to identify already burned areas within active fires to help fire responders. The need for NOAA to monitor these hazards twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, is supported by ICEYE’s around the clock tasking capabilities.
The collaboration will expand on NOAA’s recent use of ICEYE imagery that was used in combination with other sources to respond to environmental hazards. Both parties collaborated closely after Hurricane Ida to verify the condition of oil rigs and infrastructure along the Gulf Coast, resulting in NOAA identifying over a dozen oil spills.
NOAA also leveraged ICEYE’s satellite imagery off the coast of southern California in response to the recent oil leak from a submerged pipeline. The imagery and data provided by ICEYE offered situational awareness to oil spill response crews by identifying the migration of the oil on the water and its movement over time caused by tides, currents and winds.
Unlike a traditional Earth imaging satellite, ICEYE’s constellation of SAR satellites bounce a powerful radar beam off the surface of the Earth from approximately 550 kilometers in space, thereby painting a picture of what is happening on the ground below. The technology can see through clouds, smoke and even image the ground at night. This provides customers with persistent coverage of fast breaking events on the ground and in all weather conditions.
“At ICEYE, we often say that you can’t respond to what you can’t see,” said Eric Jensen, President of ICEYE US. “With the world's largest constellation of SAR satellites, we are able to offer unmatched monitoring capabilities for our clients, providing them with the ability to persistently monitor any location on earth, at any time of day and in any type of weather. We are very pleased to be able to collaborate with NOAA in their response efforts and we look forward to assisting them on future events.”