A first shot from DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite shows the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)
The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center San Antonio, Texas, where DigitalGlobe is showing off its first images for the GeoInt 2009 conference.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)Twelve days after it launched WorldView-2 into orbit, DigitalGlobe has released its first images from the satellite, which will supply high-resolution photography for Google's and Microsoft's online mapping services.
The first images are of two locations in San Antonio, Texas, where the company is showing off its work at the GeoInt 2009 Symposium this week, and of Dallas Love Airport.
The quality of the images should improve over these first shots, taken Monday. "More refinements to early-stage images can be expected as the ongoing check-out and calibration continues," DigitaGlobe said.
Microsoft and Nokia sponsored the WorldView-2 launch, but the former's Bing and the latter's Navteq won't be the only services to get the imagery. They'll share it with Google, which has been the sole online beneficiary of images from GeoEye-1, a satellite launched last year by DigitalGlobe rival GeoEye.
The new satellite is able to capture imagery with a resolution fine enough to detect features as small as 0.46 meters, or 1 1/2 feet, on the ground, though federal regulations permit DigitalGlobe to offer images with only a maximum resolution of 0.5 meters for general commercial use, the Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe said. Other DigitalGlobe satellites with sub-meter resolution in orbit already are QuickBird and WorldView-1.
"WorldView-2 is expected to improve the speed and rate of imagery delivery to the government and commercial markets with large-scale collection capacity and daily revisit rates," meaning that the satellite can photograph the same site multiple times during the same day, the company said. The satellite can capture multispectral imagery--eight bands of light, or more than what's visible to humans--though at a lower resolution of 1.8 meters.
Dallas Love Airport as photographed by WorldView-2.
(Credit: DigitalGlobe)
A Boeing Delta II 7920 launches DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite.
(Credit: Bill Hartenstein, Boeing)In 2008, Google got its logo on the rocket launching the GeoEye-1 satellite for collecting space-based imagery. This year, it's Microsoft's turn.
The Bing logo appeared on the side of a Boeing Delta II 7920 rocket that launched DigitalGlobe's new WorldView-2 satellite last week from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But where Google got sole online rights to the GeoEye-1 imagery, Microsoft will be sharing access to WorldView-2 images with Google, a Digital Globe representative said.
Bing and Nokia sponsored the rocket launching DigitalGlobe's newest imaging satellite.
(Credit: Bill Hartenstein, Boeing)Another sponsor of the rocket is Nokia, whose Navteq subsidiary also supplies digital maps.
Bing today offers aerial and satellite imagery that looks straight down on some locations and a birds'-eye view that gives an angled view. Still, Microsoft touted its DigitalGlobe partnership as greatly expanding what's available online.
"We now have access to one of the highest resolution global satellite imagery and aerial photography collections (460 million sq. km. + 1 million sq. km. per day moving forward) through a deal we've just struck with DigitalGlobe," said Microsoft's Chris Pendleton in a blog post. "We'll finally be able to backfill areas around the world where people have come to my blog and complained about Virtual Earth not having good imagery or photos in their countries--Poland, Hungary, Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, to name a few--I've heard you loud and clear. And, now, we're fixing that problem."
Google, which already had a DigitalGlobe partnership, was more understated, merely offering congratulations on the launch in a blog post Monday.
In the last year, though, Google slurped up a lot of GeoEye-1 imagery--about 500,000 square kilometers, according to Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo. By comparison, Texas is about 678,000 square kilometers.
Among new areas in Google Earth and Google Maps photographed by GeoEye-1 are Zhangye, China; Perth, Australia; Tangier, Morocco; Como, Italy; Dublin, Ireland; Curitiba, Brazil; Leduc, Canada; Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo; and the formerly closed city of Sevastopol, Ukraine.
DigitalGlobe expects WorldView-2 will double the company's capacity to collect imagery. The satellite's top resolution can detect features as small as 0.46 meter, though U.S. government regulations permit general commercial sales of imagery only of 0.5-meter resolution.
Ball Aerospace built the satellite and, as with GeoEye-1, ITT's Space Systems Division supplied its image sensor.
Launching satellites is an expensive business, but there's at least some funding available: GeoEye secured $400 million in a sale of debt last week.
This shot of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania is the first image from the GeoEye-1 satellite. Google is a commercial customer for the satellite's imagery. Click for a larger view.
(Credit: GeoEye)Golden Bears fans, take note: The first high-resolution photos from GeoEye's newest satellite, GeoEye-1, have begun arriving, and Kutztown University in Pennsylvania is the first subject of scrutiny.
These are the shots that eventually will show up on Google Maps and Google Earth; Google has an exclusive partnership to use the GeoEye-1 imagery for online services. The satellite's camera can capture image details as small as 41 centimeters, though commercial customers only get 50-centimeter resolution because of U.S. regulations.
The Kutztown University image was taken at noon EDT Tuesday while the satellite was moving south at an altitude of 423 miles at a speed of 4.5 miles per second relative to the Earth's surface, GeoEye said.
GeoEye launched the satellite on September 6; GeoEye-2 is slated for a launch in 2011 or 2012. It has a 25-centimeter resolution.
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