New
Tasking based on day or night
It is now possible to designate a tasking request to occur during either the night or the day for both single and repeat (point) tasks. This feature is not available for area (polygon) tasking requests.
Designating Collection Time in Console
From the Create New Task page in Console, change the Collection Time by selecting either the Day or Night button.
The Collection Time parameter is determined by the local time at the center point of the Area of Interest (AOI) for the single or repeat tasking request.
Available options are:
- Day: Task will be collected between 6am (06:00) and 6pm (18:00)
- Night: Task will be collected between 6pm (18:00) and 6am (06:00)
- Anytime: Task will be collected at the next available opportunity
The default Collection Time is Anytime, as this increases the chance of the tasking request being accepted.
Restricting the Collection Time to Night or Day will automatically update the potential satellite access times displayed in Mission Awareness on the Create New Task page. Please note, the time listed under each potential satellite access time is in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), not local time.
Designating Collection Time in the API
The Collection Time for a task can also be specified in the Public API through the localTime parameter in the collectConstraints object of the tasking request.
The localTime parameter can be used to restrict the time of day at which the image is collected. This value is defined by a list of time ranges, representing the seconds [start, stop] in the day when the collect can be taken.
Example values:
Anytime
localTime: [[0, 86400]]
Any time during the 24-hour period. 0 is the first second in the day and 86400 is the last second in the day (default).
Day
localTime: [[21600, 64800]]
Between 6am (06:00) and 6pm (18:00). 21600 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6am (60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, for 6 hours) and 64800 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6pm (60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, for 18 hours)
Night
localTime: [[0, 21600], [64800, 86400]]
Between 6pm (18:00) and 6am (06:00). 0 is the first second in the day and 21600 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6am. 64800 is the number of seconds elapsed at 6pm and 86400 is the last second in the day.
For more information, see the API reference for Tasking.
Search imagery based on day or night
It is also now possible to search the archive imagery catalog based on whether the image was collected during the night or the day.
Once an Area of Interest (AOI) is defined in Console, the available imagery in the geographic area will appear in the results window and the Filters panel can be expanded to further refine the search results based on imagery metadata.
A new Collection Time parameter filter is now available to show imagery captured during the following timeframes:
- Day: Imagery collected between 6am (06:00) and 6pm (18:00)
- Night: Imagery collected between 6pm (18:00) and 6am (06:00)
- All Values: All imagery collected over the AOI
View Collection Time imagery attribute
The Collection Time attribute is now a property of the imagery metadata and can be viewed on the Imagery Details panel: