WorldView-2 To Reach Full Operational Capability at the Start of 2010
Longmont, Colo., December 17, 2009 – DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI), a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution world imagery products and services for defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial customers, announced today that its latest high-resolution satellite, WorldView-2, is expected to achieve full operational capability on January 4, 2010.
Successfully launched on October 8, 2009, WorldView-2 produced the first set of images within eleven days after launch. The satellite is expected to complete its commissioning process by January 4, enabling DigitalGlobe to begin taking orders today for WorldView-2 imagery from its global resellers, partners, and customers.
"We are extremely pleased that WorldView-2 will reach full operational capability as planned, approximately 90 days after the October 8th launch," said Jill Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of DigitalGlobe. "Timeliness is becoming ever more important to our customers. The combination of WorldView-2’s collection capacity and daily revisit capabilities, coupled with the ready availability of the most current and complete coverage of the globe provided by our ImageLibrary, enables DigitalGlobe to deliver imagery faster to our customers. In addition, WorldView-2’s eight-band multispectral capabilities will offer industry-leading image quality providing for new and enhanced applications and services such as feature identification and change detection."
WorldView-2 joins 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 provides more spectral information, supporting improved levels of analysis. In addition, WorldView-2 is capable of direct tasking and direct downlink to support an even broader base of customers demanding rapid dissemination of satellite imagery.
To learn more about DigitalGlobe’s advanced constellation of sub-meter satellites, please visit www.digitalglobe.com.
About DigitalGlobe
DigitalGlobe (http://www.digitalglobe.com) is a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery products and services. Sourced from our own advanced satellite constellation, our imagery solutions support a wide variety of uses within defense and intelligence, civil agencies, mapping and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, internet portals and navigation technology. With our collection sources and comprehensive ImageLibrary (containing more than 810 million square kilometers of earth imagery and imagery products) we offer a range of on- and off-line products and services designed to enable customers to easily access and integrate our imagery into their business operations and applications. For more information, please visit www.digitalglobe.com.