Commercial satellital imaging company DigitalGlobe has announced that it will launch two new high resolution satellites in the next three years.

DigitalGlobe announced details of the company’s next generation of imaging systems, WorldView I and WorldView II. WorldView I, combined with QuickBird, will enable DigitalGlobe to have the two highest resolution commercial imaging satellites on-orbit for at least a year before any comparable system is launched. By 2008, DigitalGlobe’s constellation of high-resolution satellites will be unprecedented in the commercial satellite imaging industry, enabling commercial and government customers around the globe to access a broad selection of geospatial information products from a single source.

WorldView I, scheduled to launch no later than 2006, will be the most agile satellite ever flown commercially. The high-capacity, panchromatic imaging system features half-meter resolution imagery. With an average revisit time of 1.7 days and a swath width of 16 kilometers, WorldView I will be capable of collecting up to 500,000 square kilometers (200,000 sq. mi.) per day of half-meter imagery. WorldView I will also be capable of directly downlinking imagery to customer locations. The satellite will be equipped with state-of-the-art geo-location accuracy capability and will exhibit stunning agility with rapid targeting and efficient in-track stereo collection.

WorldView II is planned to launch no later than 2008. Operating at an altitude of 770 kilometers, WorldView II will enable DigitalGlobe to offer half-meter panchromatic resolution and 1.8- meter multispectral resolution. The WorldView II system will allow DigitalGlobe to substantially expand its imagery product offerings to both commercial and international customers with a more commercially desirable, higher performance product.

This news is important for many people, as DigitalGlobe is one of the data providers for Google Earth and Google Maps. These two new cameras will give better resolution to photographs and will allow the satellites with a little bit less resolution to move on to less mapped spots, giving a better coverage of countryside and smaller cities.

October 6th, 2005 | General Science