Written by / Compiled by KMI Media Group staff

GIF 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 6 (November/December)

 

After the successful launch this fall of its WorldView-2 high-resolution, remote-sensing satellite, DigitalGlobe expects the satellite to be operational and delivering commercially available imagery products and services by early next year.

The company released the first images from the satellite shortly after the October 8 launch, including an image of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas, on the first day of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s GEOINT 2009 Symposium being held there.

The launch of WorldView-2 marked another first for DigitalGlobe and the industry as the first high-resolution, eightband, multispectral commercial satellite. WorldView-2 is expected to improve the speed and rate of imagery delivery to the government and commercial markets with large-scale collection capacity and daily revisit rates. WorldView-2 joined DigitalGlobe’s existing submeter satellites on orbit, QuickBird and WorldView-1, to enable an annual imaging capacity equivalent to three times the earth’s land mass.

WorldView-2 collects multispectral imagery at 1.8 meter resolution and panchromatic imagery at 0.46 meters. The additional multispectral band capability supports improved levels of feature identification and extraction, and more accurately reflects the world’s natural color.

In related news, DigitalGlobe and Microsoft have agreed to launch the Clear30 program, an initiative to distribute high-resolution, 30-cm aerial imagery of contiguous landscapes, initially in the U.S. and Western Europe. These orthophoto mosaics will be available through Bing Maps and through DigitalGlobe channels.

The Clear30 initiative is a new agreement that expands the current relationship between Microsoft and DigitalGlobe and reflects a commitment to increase the accessibility and use of high-resolution digital imagery. To collect the first ever multicontinental aerial imagery from 30 cm, the companies will use the UltraCamG, a large format digital aerial camera manufactured by Vexcel Imaging, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, which is based on Vexcel’s UltraCam large format camera systems.

“We are very pleased to be expanding our relationship with Microsoft and look forward to introducing the UltraCamG imagery into our world imagery solutions,” said Jill Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of DigitalGlobe. “The addition of large quantities of very high-resolution digital aerial imagery, collected quickly and published on a consistent update schedule, will further enhance our ability to distribute a comprehensive digitized globe to our customers.”

The companies did not provide financial details concerning the agreement.

Imagery from the UltraCamG will further expand DigitalGlobe’s ImageLibrary and will complement the satellite imagery products available from the DigitalGlobe high-resolution satellite constellation, including the recently launched WorldView-2 satellite. Current collection areas for the UltraCamG program include the 48 contiguous United States and Western Europe. ♦

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