WorldView-2 high-resolution, 8-band multispectral satellite images, released

DigitalGlobe, a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution world-imagery products and services for defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial customers, today released the first images from WorldView-2, the company’s most recent high-resolution, remote-sensing satellite. Initial images, issued after just 11 days on orbit, captured Love Field Airport near Dallas and the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas. More refinements to early-stage images can be expected as the ongoing check-out and calibration continues.

WorldView-2 was successfully launched on October 8, 2009, and is currently completing its routine calibration and check-out period. DigitalGlobe expects the satellite to be operational and delivering commercially available imagery products and services approximately 90 days from the launch date.

The launch of WorldView-2 marked another first for DigitalGlobe and the industry as the first high-resolution, eight-band, 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 sub-meter 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.[i] The additional multispectral band capability supports improved levels of feature identification and extraction and more accurately reflects the world’s natural color.

DigitalGlobe will preview first imagery from WorldView-2 at booth #591 at the GeoInt 2009 Symposium this week in San Antonio, Texas.

More WorldView-2 first images here.