DigitalGlobe has a new eye in the sky, after the rocket carrying its third satellite blasted off successfully from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, yesterday.
WorldView-2, is expected to double the company’s collection capacity. From an altitude of 770 kilometers (almost 500 miles) it will capture high resolution Panchromatic images with better than 0.5-meter resolution, in addition to 1.8-meter multispectral resolution imagery.
WorldView-1 was the world’s first half-meter resolution commercial imaging satellite, when it was launched in September, 2007. The stereo capability of WorldView-1 and WorldView-2 provides the opportunity to extract high-resolution digital elevation models (pdf). Stereo pairs are supplied as two full scenes (490 km2) with 90% overlap.
DigitalGlobe and its rival, GeoEye supply images to location-based technologies like Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, and navigation device makers such as Nokia and Garmin. Their biggest customer, however, is the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which accounts for about two-thirds of their revenue.
SPOT-5, launched in 2002, offers 5-meter and 2.5-meter resolution and a wide imaging swath. SPOT-6 and 7 are expected to be launched in 2012 and 2013, respectively with 2-meter resolution. Joining the SPOT constellation next year will be PLEIADES-1 followed by Pleiades-2 in 2011 with a direct tasking capability. It will allow customers to program for new imagery up to 40 minutes before acquisition.
The fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill includes a little-noticed provision directing the Defense Department to develop two commercial-grade electro-optical satellites, one with a 1.1-meter aperture and a second with a more powerful 1.5-meter aperture. The House approved the agreement on Thursday; the Senate is expected to do so this week.
WorldView-2, built by Ball Aerospace, can image eight multispectral bands using an imaging sensor provided by ITT space systems. Ball’s BCP 5000 platform with a design life of more than seven years, was used.
The Ball Corporation is a supplier of canning jars and containers for beverage, food and household products, and of aerospace and other technologies and services, primarily for the U.S. government.
Ball’s spacecraft bus is designed to handle both next-generation optical and synthetic aperture radar remote sensing payloads.
The satellite provides 2199 gigabits of onboard solid state storage with an 800 Mbps link in the S-band and X-band using the CCSDS.org data protocol, now de rigueur for most spacecraft. It’s also worthy of note that WorldView2 could be a prime target in any future Satellite War.
Speaking of spacecraft, NASA has successfully bombed the Moon (Google News). Their Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) spacecraft created twin impacts on the moon’s surface early Friday in a search for water ice. Scientists will analyze data from the spacecraft’s instruments to assess whether water ice is present. See Dailywireless: NASA to Bomb the Moon.
Sky Map for Android is a Mobile Planetarium. The app can determine the exact direction that your phone is facing and display the stars that are visible. If you want to identify that bright star in the west, all you have to do is point the device in that direction and you’ll see “Venus” appear on your screen.
