Airbus Defence and Space has signed a 4-year contract with Scanex, the Russian Earth observation company, for access to optical satellite imagery via the One Atlas platform, covering 180 million km² throughout the contract.
Airbus and Scanex to feed Russia’s most popular search engine Yandex with “One Atlas” satellite imagery data
Yandex, one of the largest internet companies in Europe, and operating Russia’s most popular search engine, will directly benefit from this agreement. Yandex feeds its Yandex.Maps portal by purchasing satellite imagery from Scanex.
The 180 million km² of One Atlas data will be integrated into Yandex.Maps, ensuring access to fresh SPOT satellites 1.5m resolution images on a global scale, and Pléiades satellite 0.5m resolution product over cities. One Atlas is a satellite image basemap which covers the earth landmasses with professional grade imagery. Available online 24/7 and refreshed within a 12-month period, One Atlas provides customers with easy access to cost effective, high-quality and homogeneous imagery. This streamed basemap facilitates the sharing of data across teams or partner organisations, with no compromise on security or privacy.
“Yandex.Maps proposes detailed maps of most countries, and satellite layer,” said Andrey Strelkov, Yandex’s head of geolocation products. “Access to the up-to-date, high-quality images of the One Atlas platform will help us to regularly improve our geo-services.”
Valery Barinberg, Scanex General Director, said: “This new agreement reinforces the long-term collaboration between our companies and brings together two organizations, Airbus and Yandex, well known for delivering quality content, expertise and innovation to the world. It was a group effort and we are excited to be a part of this team.”
“We are very happy to sign this One Atlas contract with Scanex, long-term and faithful partner, who has always trusted in our products and innovations”, said François Lombard, Head of Intelligence Business Cluster at Airbus Defence and Space.
Airbus is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2016, it generated revenues of € 67 billion and employed a workforce of around 134,000. Airbus offers the most comprehensive range of passenger airliners from 100 to more than 600 seats. Airbus is also a European leader providing tanker, combat, transport and mission aircraft, as well as Europe’s number one space enterprise and the world’s second largest space business. In helicopters, Airbus provides the most efficient civil and military rotorcraft solutions worldwide.
Yandex is one of Europe's largest internet companies and the leading search provider in Russia. Its share of the country's search market in February 2017 was 55.5%, according to LiveInternet data. Yandex services and mobile applications are used by 92% of Russian internet users in cities with a population of at least 700,000 (TNS Web Index, August 2016, users aged 12-64, including mobile devices).