Over 85 million square kilometers of fresh basemap imagery from Airbus Defense and Space is now available in ArcGIS Online. This announcement follows the signing of an agreement between Airbus Defense and Space and Esri for access to select sets of Airbus Defense and Space imagery.

Through this agreement with Esri, ArcGIS Online users will have access to a near global coverage with Airbus Defense and Space's SPOTMaps 2.5m, seamless mosaic product, as well as very high resolution 50cm Pleiades imagery products over major cities worldwide.

These fresh datasets will be used to enhance the existing Esri ArcGIS Online World Imagery Basemap, one of the foundation datasets available worldwide to all Esri users.

The seamless SPOTMaps 2.5 mosaic provides users with a high-end, seamless basemap over most of the world to be used as a backdrop for many GIS applications.

This mosaicked data is enhanced by fresh Pleiades imagery, giving ArcGIS Online users updated information over major cities worldwide. Imagery will also be available, on demand, for deployments through the Esri Data Appliance solution, and more will become available through the end of September 2014.

"With this announcement, ArcGIS users will have easier access to really crisp, high resolution imagery," said Jack Dangermond, President of Esri.

"We've added over 85M km2 of Airbus Defense and Space SPOTMaps 2.5m seamless, global and current mid-scale imagery over 164 countries to our cloud basemaps, available through ArcGIS Online".

"We are excited by this partnership with Esri. Thanks to this agreement, ArcGIS Online users will be able to leverage an extensive access to our high resolution, high-end, and, more importantly, fresh basemap content through the Esri platform," said Bernhard Brenner, Head of the Geo-Intelligence program line of Airbus Defense and Space.