See what Grand Mosque in Makkah looks like from space

Grand Mosque captured in high resolution by DubaiSat-2

DUBAI 5 June 2017: To celebrate Ramadan, DubaiSat-2, a satellite owned and operated by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) captured a satellite image of The Great Mosque of Makkah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

DubaiSat-2 provides high quality satellite imagery to several institutions, inside and outside of the UAE

DubaiSat-2 captures high resolution satellite images (1 meter) used for urban planning and mapping, monitoring environmental changes and disaster management. The satellite’s camera features a 1-metre panchromatic resolution and a 4-metre multi-spectral resolution (coloured images) and can store 512 images, each 12km x

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, adds Wam.

kabba from space

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.

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.

By Angel Chan