When the IKONOS satellite was successfully launched in 1999, it made history with the world's first 1-meter commercial remote sensing satellite. Moving over the ground at approximately 7 km. per second, IKONOS collects data at a rate of over 2,000 square kilometers per minute. While having the ability to capture multispectral images at 4-meter resolution, IKONOS can also simultaneously record objects as small as 1-meter in black-and-white. By combining the multispectral properties of the 4-meter imagery with the detail of the 1-meter data, IKONOS imagery is processed to produce 1-meter color products.

The IKONOS-derived imagery services are categorized according to level of sophistication and positional accuracy, which is determined by the reliability of an object in the image to be within the specified accuracy of the actual location of the object on the ground.

The main categories of IKONOS imagery service are: Georectified Imagery, Orthorectified Imagery, and Stereo Imagery.

	Georectified imagery is ideal for investigative applications such as basic intelligence and visual interpretation projects. These products are subjected to a correction process of removing image distortions, and resampled to a ground sample distance (GSD) and a specified map projection. They are not orthorectified so the accuracy varies depending on the amount of terrain displacement.
	Orthorectified imagery is ideal for GIS professionals who require imagery that is consistently accurate and GIS-ready for regional mapping, urban planning, and image classification and analysis projects. The levels of orthorectified products differ based on accuracy and sophistications so that customers can tailor imagery requests to meet specific project needs.
	Stereo imagery allows for photogrammetric extraction of 3D feature coordinates, digital elevation models (DEMs), and orthorectified imagery. Stereo imagery is available at 1-meter resolution at the Reference and Precision accuracy levels. SISEA provides the stereo imagery pairs with a rational polynomial coefficient (RPC) camera model file for use in image processing software applications.

Among the three main categories above are six levels of IKONOS imagery service, mainly distinguished by the level of positional accuracy: Geo, Standard Ortho, Reference, Pro, Precision and Precision Plus