DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 Reaches Full Operational Capability

DigitalGlobe, announced today that its latest high-resolution satellite, WorldView-2, has achieved full operational capability. Imagery from the satellite is now available to global resellers, partners, and customers.

Blasting into orbit on October 8, 2009, WorldView-2 joins DigitalGlobe's existing sub-meter satellites, QuickBird and WorldView-1, in a three satellite constellation. WorldView-2 significantly expands the constellation's collection capacity, enabling an annual imaging capacity equivalent to three times the area of earth's land mass, and allows for intraday revisit, providing customers with the most timely, relevant imagery available in the commercial market. WorldView-2 is also the industry's first commercial high-resolution satellite to offer eight multispectral bands. This 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.

"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