Maxar

Maxar Technologies Inc. (maxar.com) is a satellite imagery company that operates 5 high resolution Earth Observation satellites.

DigitalGlobe and MDA Holdings Company merged to become Maxar Technologies (link Wikipedia) on 5 October 2017.

Important: as of July 2023, Maxar has revoked API access to its imagery for OSM editors. [1] It is unclear whether the imagery will be made available again at a later time. As of mid-August, available satellite layers in ID are: Bing, Esri World, Esri World (Clarity) Beta, Mapbox, National Agriculture, USGS.

Maxar partnership

As of May 9th 2017, DigitalGlobe has just announced availability of satellite imagery directly through a newly launched imagery service.

• Maxar-Premium is a mosaic composed of Maxar basemap with select regions filled with +Vivid or custom area of interest imagery, 50cm resolution or better, and refreshed more frequently with ongoing updates.
• Maxar-Standard is a curated set of imagery covering 86% of the earth's landmass, with 30-60cm or resolution where available, backfilled by Landsat. Average age is 2.31 years, with some areas like USA, Europe and Australia updated 2x year.

Maxar actively works with HOT for several Humanitarian missions including a major health initiative to Eradicate Malaria.

Starting in 2014, DigitalGlobe partnered with Mapbox on providing more imagery to OpenStreetMap. April 2014 announcements:

• digitalglobeblog.com 'Mapping the World with OpenStreetMap via Mapbox'
• Mapbox blog 'New imagery for OpenStreetMap'

Additionally, portions of Bing aerial imagery is also sourced from DigitalGlobe in some parts of the world.

Using Maxar imagery in editors

The easiest way to do this is to select one of the “Maxar” satellite layers as an option in iD editor and JOSM. Other methods to access Maxar imagery is through the "Mapbox Satellite" and “Bing” layers which are also available in iD and JOSM. Maxar, Bing, and Mapbox-provided layers provide rectified aerial imagery sourced by DigitalGlobe.

Note (for JOSM users): If you notice 401 http errors when accessing Maxar imagery you should remove the DigitalGlobe Imagery layer from the Selected entries list and re-add it again from the Available default entries list in the Imagery Preferences setting and do a Flush Tile Cache.

Legal permissions

Maxar Satellite EULA: DigitalGlobe, Inc. is pleased to provide its high resolution satellite imagery to OpenStreetMap in support of its mapping initiatives. By using our imagery in the OSM editor, you understand and agree that you may only use our imagery to trace, and validate edits that must be contributed back to OSM. You cannot download our imagery or use our imagery for any other purpose. We retain all right, title and interest in and to our imagery. We provide our imagery “as is,” with all faults and as available; we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, to the extent permitted by applicable law. You can recover from us only direct damages up to an amount equal to the fees you have paid to us to use our imagery on OSM, if any. We are not liable for any other damages, including consequential, lost profits, special, indirect, incidental or punitive damages. Happy mapping!

Attribution should be source=Maxar.

Mapbox: You are allowed to trace data into OpenStreetMap based on Mapbox imagery. This permission is very explicit in the Mapbox Terms of Service, and this is also explicitly linked from their blog post relating to DigitalGlobe imagery [2]. Vector data contributed to OpenStreetMap is then released under the OpenStreetMap License.

You should attribute it as source=Mapbox.

Helpful information about Using Imagery to be aware of.

Tile offset

Depending on the location, the tiles can be shifted several meters between Bing, DigitalGlobe and other imagery layers.

Imagery vintage

The beta version of Imagery Vintage for both Maxar Standard and Maxar Premium imagery layers is available since 1 Nov 2017. This beta version contains best-available information regarding the date upon which the imagery was collected. Future enhancements will address labeling consistency and positioning.

• JOSM does not show the Vintage imagery layers by default in the Imagery menu. Go to Imagery > Imagery preferences to activate the imagery layers you require.

Currently, the best way to see imagery vintage is to turn on the Vintage overlay and zoom out one or two scale levels for the labels and scene lines to appear.