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Artist's impression of WorldView satellites
WorldView
 
WorldView-1 and 2 are commercial, very high resolution optical satellites belonging to the company DigitalGlobe.
 
WorldView-1 was launched on 18 September 2007 and WorldView-2 on 8 October 2009. Both were launched on Delta 7920 rockets from the Vandenberg Air Force Base. WorldView-1 is foreseen to last until 2018, while WorldView-2 is planned to last until 2017.

Both have a sun-synchronous orbit and descend over the equator during each orbit at 10:30 am. WorldView-1 orbits at an altitude of 496 km, has an orbital period of 94.6 minutes, with an average revisit time of 1.7 days. It carries a panchromatic imaging sensor. WorldView-2 orbits at an altitude of 770 km. has an orbital period of 100 minutes and carries a multispectral imaging sensor.  
 
True color, WorldView-2 satellite image of "The Pearl"
The sensor on WorldView-1 images points on the ground at a sampling distance of 0.50 metres at nadir and 0.59 metres at an off-nadir angle of 25 degrees along track enabling stereo imaging. The swath width of the sensor is 17.6 km at nadir. The sensor on WorldView-2 has a spatial sampling of 1.85 metres and acquires imagery in 8 different bands.

The main applications for the WoldView satellites are very high resolution mapping, change detection and stereo 3D imaging.
 
 

 


Earth observation satellites
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Earth Explorer satellites
IntroductionGOCESMOSCryoSat-2
Commercial high resolution optical satellites
IKONOSQuickBird
Related links
WorldView - Technical detailsDigitalGlobe
 
 
 
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