WorldView-2 (WV2) is a commercial imaging satellite of DigitalGlobe Inc. of Longmont, CO, USA (follow-on spacecraft to WorldView-1). The overall objective is to meet the growing commercial demand for high-resolution satellite imagery (0.46 cm Pan, 1.8 m MS at nadir - representing one of the highest available spaceborne resolutions on the market).
In the fall of 2003, DigitalGlobe had received a contract from NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) of Washington DC to provide high-resolution imagery from the next-generation commercial imaging satellites. The contract award was made within NGA's NextView program. The NGA requirements called for imagery with a spatial resolution of 0.5 m panchromatic and 2 m MS (Multispectral) data.
The WorldView-2 sensor provides a high resolution panchromatic band and eight (8) multispectral bands; four (4) standard colors (red, green, blue, and near-infrared 1) and four (4) new bands (coastal, yellow, red edge, and near-infrared 2), full-color images for enhanced spectral analysis, mapping and monitoring applications, land-use planning, disaster relief, exploration, defense and intelligence, and visualization and simulation environments.
With its improved agility, WorldView-2 is able to act like a paintbrush, sweeping back and forth to collect very large areas of multispectral imagery in a single pass. WorldView-2 alone is able to collect nearly 1 million km2 every day, doubling the collection capacity of our constellation to nearly 2 million km2 per day. The combination of WorldView-2’s increased agility and high altitude enables it to typically revisit any place on earth in 1.1 days, revisit time drops below one day and never exceeds two days, providing the most same-day passes of any commercial high resolution satellite.
Instrument: WV110 (WorldView-110 camera)
- 8-band multispectral imager (coastal blue, blue, green, yellow, red, red edge, NIR1, NIR2)
- panchromatic
- pushbroom imager
- swath width: 16.4 km
