WorldView-1 (WV 1) is a commercial Earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe. WorldView-1 was launched on 18 September 2007, followed later by the WorldView-2 in 2009. First imagery from WorldView-1 was available in October 2007, prior to the six-year anniversary of the launch of QuickBird, DigitalGlobe's previous satellite. WorldView-1 was partially financed through an agreement with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Some of the imagery captured by WorldView-1 for the NGA is not available to the general public. However, WorldView-1 freed capacity on DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite to meet the growing commercial demand for multi-spectral geospatial imagery.

Design

Ball Aerospace built the WorldView-1 satellite bus and camera using an off-axis camera design identical to Quickbird, with the instrument's focal plane being supplied by ITT Exelis. The camera is a panchromatic imaging system featuring half-meter resolution imagery. With an average revisit time of 1.7 days, WorldView-1 is capable of collecting up to 750,000 km2 per day of half-meter imagery.

Launch