The Inquirer reports that the UAE is planning to launch a remote sensing satellite. Details are sketchy, but the paper reports:

[Senior military official from UAE] Brigadier Khalifa Mohammad Al Rumaithi, told Gulf News of plans to launch a satellite in conjunction with other GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE).

Speaking at the Defence Geospatial Intelligence conference, the UAE’s Chief of Military Works at the Armed Forces, noted that a lot of progress has already been made on the Satellite, dubbed Dubai sat1, which the UAE says is for peaceful and civilian purposes only.

It will purportedly be able to help the country with urban development planning and infrastructure by providing accurate maps and be useful in management of potential natural disasters. It's not for spying, honest.

"The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) signed a contract with Sinclair Knight Merz Pty Ltd (SKM) at Defence House in Wellington today as part of the KiwImage project." The project entails gathering 60 centimeter imagery for the two main islands and others New Zealand controls. Where will the image come from? I think DigitalGlobe, though the article says "Global Image."

- Scoop.nz

The deal ran $4 million and opens the door to US growth for Yotta, a technology group Oxford Metrics plc. Yotta is leading the way in highway imaging in the UK. It aims to support highway departments and mapping organizations around the world. Who is Mobile Video?

Mobile Video, which was founded in 1986 and is based in Kansas City, Missouri, captures geospatial images of properties for tax administrators, GIS departments and the emergency services. It employs some 40 staff operating a fleet of 16 field vehicles across the US, and manages several contracts with local government agencies.

- M and A Deals

John Marburger, the president's science advisor, visited EROS in South Dakota (Joe Francica worked there back in the day) and sees a bright future for the nation's image repository. A new Landsat satellite planned for 2011 and the potential of a command and control center in Sioux Falls means the center may take over some work currently done in Maryland.

- KELO

Years ago I interviewed imagery guy Gerry Kinn (then at EMERGE, now at ESRI) about the killer apps for aerial and satellite imagery. He told me a story of how you'd go into the Home Depot (or the like) and the clerk would use an imagery based app to determine how much fertilizer you needed for your lawn. I think we are a getting there!

Enter Sungevity. The company uses imagery (from MS Virtual Earth since it need the obliques from Pictometry) along with information from one's electric bill to estimate the return on installing solar panels, which the company sells and installs. The "no visit" estimate cuts time and cost from an implementation.

The company's secret sauce is a trigonometry-heavy application that can take satellite imagery and create a 3D model of a house. From the model, Sungevity calculates the pitch of the roof, the azimuth (for instance, where the house faces in relation to compass points) and the available area.

"You introduce errors when you put a guy on the roof," Kennedy asserted.

Sungevity uses data from Microsoft Virtual Earth rather than Google Earth for its satellite imagery. Google Earth only provides a top-down view of a roof. Virtual Earth gives data from different angles, which lets Sungevity calculate pitch.

Currently working California, the company hopes to go nationwide. One mail campaign will include an image of the resident's house with some quick math to determine potential effectiveness.

- C|net

That's the question at Motley Fool. GeoEye was up some 9% yesterday. Rich Smith doesn't understand why. He suggests that it's not good news for GeoEye since now it has a direct competitor for easy to get capital where before it was the only game in U.S. satellite companies for investment.