Broadcasting live on Internet DigitalGlobe launches one very cool satellite

Broadcasting live on the Internet from Vandenberg Air Force Base, WorldView-2 roared into orbit yesterday atop a Boeing Delta II rocket - making DigitalGlobe the only commercial imagery company with a high-res, eight-band multispectral imagery capability. The capability will enable higher levels of feature identification and extraction and more accurately reflect the world’s natural color - with potential for many applications, including environmental monitoring, change detection, and defense and intelligence. WorldView-2’s advanced geopositional technology is allowing for significant improvements in accuracy as well -with no processing, no elevation model and no ground control. With WorldView-1, and anticipated for WorldView-2, the accuracy is coming in at a remarkable 4.1m CE90. If all that wasn't enough, other features announced are just wicked cool -

"WorldView-1 and WorldView-2 are the first commercial satellites to have control moment gyroscopes (CMGs). This high-performance technology provides acceleration up to 10X that of other attitude control actuators and improves both maneuvering and targeting capability. With the CMGs, slew time is reduced from over 60 seconds to only 9 seconds to cover 300km. This means WorldView-2 will be able to rapidly swing precisely from one target to another, allowing extensive imaging of many targets, as well as stereo, in a single orbital pass.

With its improved agility, WorldView-2 will be able to act like a paintbrush, sweeping back and forth to collect very large areas of multispectral imagery in a single pass. WorldView-2 alone will be able to collect nearly 1 million sq km every day, doubling the collection capacity of our constellation to nearly 2 million sq km per day. And the combination of WorldView-2’s increased agility and high altitude enables it to typically revisit any place on earth in 1.1 days. When added to our constellation, revisit time drops below one day and never exceeds two days, providing the most same-day passes of any commercial high resolution satellite constellation.

Along with the four typical multispectral bands: Blue (450-510), Green (510-580), Red (630-690) and NearIR (770-895), WorldView-2 introduces the following new color bands for enhanced multispectral analysis:

Coastal Band (400 - 450 nm) This band supports vegetation identification and analysis, and supports bathymetric studies based upon its chlorophyll and water penetration characteristics. Also, this band is subject to atmospheric scattering and will be used to investigate atmospheric correction techniques.

Yellow Band (585 - 625 nm) Used to identify "yellow-ness" characteristics of targets, important for vegetation applications. Also, this band will assist in the development of "true-color" hue correction for human vision representation.

Red Edge Band (705 - 745 nm) Aids in the analysis of vegetative condition. Directly related to plant health revealed through chlorophyll production.

Near Infrared 2 Band (860 - 1040 nm) This band overlaps the NIR 1 band but is less affected by atmospheric influence. It supports vegetation analysis and biomass studies"

Sources: DigitalGlobe