Summary

Description

The USGS Commercial Data Purchases (UCDP) imagery collection is an archive of commercial remote sensing imagery from several different commercial vendors. The UCDP imagery is located at the Earth Resources Observation & Science (EROS) Center. This collection of imagery supports the Commercial Remote Sensing Space Policy (CRSSP). The overall goal of the UCDP imagery collection is to provide data to qualified users, primarily federal agencies at no cost or at a nominal cost. Limitations on which users have access to use/purchase copies of the imagery are based on vendor licensing for individual images. Users are allowed to search all UCDP imagery in the archive, but are restricted to only ordering properly licensed images. Users have the option to purchase imagery license upgrades for imagery not currently licensed appropriately for their federal agency. The Commercial Remote Sensing Data Contracts (CRSDC), available through the USGS, handles the imagery license upgrades. The imagery license upgrades enable federal users to purchase and use a copy of the imagery at a nominal fee. Copies of the current imagery can be downloaded/purchased from EarthExplorer. Users can not specify processing parameters for the imagery. (e.g. if an IKONOS image was originally purchased from Space Imaging as a "Standard Ortho" product, UTM projection, WGS84 Datum, and GeoTiff format, those are the only parameters available for that image.) Current USGS Commercial Data Purchases (UCDP) imagery includes IKONOS imagery from Space Imaging, QuickBird Imagery from DigitalGlobe and OrbView imagery from ORBIMAGE.