Grand Mosque captured in high resolution by DubaiSat-2

The Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, has been captured by DubaiSat-2, via a high-resolution advanced imaging system that offers a major improvement in image quality, to mark the Holy Month of Ramadan.

DubaiSat-2 is a remote sensing mini-satellite project of Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, formerly known as Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology, a UAE organization which is part of the Dubai Government.

DubaiSat-1 and DubaiSat-2 represent cultivation of years of vision and hard work to achieve future aspirations to make the UAE a global hub for building satellites and a leading centre for space technology. They represent the need of UAE for the technology of developing satellites and the continuous need for spatial information and earth observation data of UAE as well as on a global scale.

DubaiSat-2 was launched in 2013 from the Yasny Launch Base in Russia,using the Russian Dnepr rocket launcher.

The satellite has a high-resolution advanced imaging system that offers a major improvement in image quality, implementing a larger payload optical design with a larger mirror diameter, resulting in a resolution of 1m for the PAN band and 4 m for the 4 multispectral detectors. The detectors used are TDI CCDs which improve the SNR of the imagery.

It has been designed to provide higher quality electro-optical imagery for various applications, including environmental projects, urban planning and infrastructure.

The satellite is equipped to provide space imagery of the Earth throughout its lifetime and can take multiple images of the same area in one day.

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