EarlyBird-1
EarlyBird-1 (COSPAR 1997-085A) commercial Earth imaging satellite was built for EarthWatch Inc. by CTA Space Systems (later part of Orbital Sciences Corporation) and launched on 24 December 1997, from the Svobodny Cosmodrome by a Start-1 launch vehicle.[18] It had a mass of 317 kg and a design life of 3 years (fuel reserves for 5 years). It included a panchromatic (black-and-white) camera with a 3 m resolution and a multispectral (color) camera with a 15 m resolution. The imaging sensor was derived from a 1998-cancelled NASA satellite called Clark (SSTI 2).[19] EarlyBird-1 was the first commercial satellite to be launched from the Svobodny Cosmodrome. Although the launch was successful, the satellite lost communications after only four days in orbit due to power system failure.[20]
IKONOS
IKONOS was launched 24 September 1999. It was the world's first high-resolution commercial imaging satellite to collect panchromatic (black-and-white) images with 0.8 m resolution and multispectral (color) imagery with 3.2 m resolution.[21] On 31 March 2015, IKONOS was officially decommissioned after more than doubling her mission design life, spending 5,680 days in orbit and making 83,131 trips around the Earth.[22]
QuickBird
QuickBird, launched on 18 October 2001,[6] was DigitalGlobe's primary satellite until early 2015. It was built by Ball Aerospace, and launched by a Boeing Delta II. It is in a 450 km altitude, 98° inclination Sun-synchronous orbit. An earlier launch attempt resulted in the loss of QuickBird-1; after this, the second satellite of the series, QuickBird-2 was launched and it is this satellite that became known simply as QuickBird (as no other QuickBird satellites were launched). It included a panchromatic camera with a 60 cm resolution and a multispectral camera with a 2.4 m resolution. On 27 January 2015, QuickBird was de-orbited, exceeding her initial life expectancy by nearly 300%.[22]
GeoEye-1
The GeoEye-1 satellite collects images at 0.41 m panchromatic (black-and-white) and 1.65 m multispectral resolution. The satellite can collect up to 350000 km2 of multispectral imagery per day. This is used for large-scale mapping projects. GeoEye-1 can revisit any point on Earth once every three days or sooner.
WorldView satellite system
WorldView-1
Ball Aerospace built WorldView-1.[23] It was launched on 18 September 2007 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Delta II 7920-10C. Launch services were provided by United Launch Alliance (ULA). The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is expected to be a major customer of WorldView-1 imagery.[24] It included a panchromatic only camera with a 50 cm maximum resolution.
WorldView-2
Ball Aerospace built WorldView-2. It was launched on 8 October 2009. DigitalGlobe partnered with Boeing commercial launch services to deliver WorldView-2 into a Sun-synchronous orbit.[25]
WorldView-1
Ball Aerospace built WorldView-1.[23] It was launched on 18 September 2007 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Delta II 7920-10C. Launch services were provided by United Launch Alliance (ULA). The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is expected to be a major customer of WorldView-1 imagery.[24] It included a panchromatic only camera with a 50 cm maximum resolution.
WorldView-2
Ball Aerospace built WorldView-2. It was launched on 8 October 2009. DigitalGlobe partnered with Boeing commercial launch services to deliver WorldView-2 into a Sun-synchronous orbit.[25][26] The satellite includes a panchromatic sensor with a 46 cm maximum resolution and a multispectral sensor of 184 cm[27]
WorldView-3
Ball Aerospace built WorldView-3. It was launched on 13 August 2014. It has a maximum resolution of 25 cm. WorldView-3 operates at an altitude of 617 km, where it has an average revisit time of less than once per day. Over the course of a day it is able to collect imagery of up to 680000 km2.[28]
Previously, DigitalGlobe was only licensed to sell images with a higher resolution than 50 cm to the U.S. military.[29] However, DigitalGlobe obtained permission, in June 2014, from the United States Department of Commerce, to allow the company to more widely exploit its commercial satellite imagery. The company was permitted to offer customers the highest resolution imagery available from their constellation. Additionally, the updated approvals allowed the sale of imagery to customers at up to 25 cm panchromatic and 100 cm multispectral ground sample distance (GSD), beginning six months after WorldView-3 became operational. WorldView-3 was launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle in the 401 configuration on 13 August 2014, at 18:30 UTC from Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 3 (SLC-3E) at Vandenberg Air Force base.[30]
WorldView-3 is the industry's first multi-payload, super-spectral, high-resolution commercial satellite.
WorldView-4
The WorldView-4 satellite was designed to provide panchromatic images at a highest resolution of 31 cm, and multispectral images at 124 cm.[32] Originally named GeoEye-2, the spacecraft was designed and built by Lockheed Martin,[33] while the camera payload was provided by ITT Corporation.[34]
Following the merger of GeoEye and DigitalGlobe, in 2013, DigitalGlobe announced that GeoEye-2 would be completed as a ground spare to be launched if or when required.[35][36] It was renamed to WorldView-4 in July 2014, when the company announced that it would be launched in Fall 2016.
