New Markets for Satellite Imagery
In June, the U.S. Department of Commerce, granting a request by DigitalGlobe, gave the company permission to sell its imagery at the best resolutions available from its current constellation. Additionally, six months after its new WorldView-3 satellite is operational, DigitalGlobe will be permitted to sell imagery at a resolution of up to 0.25 meters panchromatic and 1.0 meters multispectral GSD. As of this writing, WorldView-3 is on schedule to be launched in mid- August from Vandenburg AFB on an Atlas 5 rocket.
DigitalGlobe currently operates a fleet of five Earth imaging satellites. Two of them—GeoEye-1 and WorldView-2—collect imagery at a resolution higher than 0.50 meters, and the company will be free to sell it at the highest native resolution. WorldView-3 has been designed to provide a resolution of 0.31 meters, and the WorldView-4 satellite, which is substantially complete, has been designed to capture imagery at a similar resolution. It is scheduled to launch in mid-2016 and provide 30-centimeter resolution imagery.
The relaxation of the resolution restrictions is specific to various spectral bands, explains Dr. Kumar Navulur, DigitalGlobe’s director of next generation products. The 0.25-meter restriction is only for the panchromatic (black and white) band, while there is a 1-meter restriction for visible and NIR bands because of the vast amount of information that they contain.