Overview

WorldView-1 spacecraft built by Ball Aerospace for DigitalGlobe provides high resolution imaging capability used for defense and intelligence, disaster relief, civil government mapping, land use planning, and visualization and simulation environments.

Our Role

Ball Aerospace provided its BCP 5000 spacecraft bus, and the WorldView 60 camera for the commercial imaging satellite. Launched Sept. 18, 2007, WorldView-1 is capable of collecting up to 500,000 square kilometers (200,000 sq. mi.) of half-meter imagery per day.

The first WorldView-1 images were released Oct. 15. This image shows downtown Houston, Texas.

The satellite’s high agility enables rapid revisit of collection areas, while its orbit altitude of 450 kilometers enables unprecedented image resolution of better than 50 cm.

WorldView-1 is equipped with a state-of-the-art geo-location accuracy capability, and incorporates control moment gyros, which enables WorldView-1 to exhibit stunning agility with rapid targeting and efficient in-track stereo collection.

In October 2009, DigitalGlobe launched WorldView-2, a second more capable WorldView satellite to compliment WorldView-1 and QuickBird. The trio of satellites, built by Ball Aerospace offers the best high-resolution imagery data gathering capability available today.

WorldView-1 supports DigitalGlobe’s NextView contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and commercial customers around the world.

The spacecraft bus offers increased resolution and target selection flexibility, and accommodates future optical, scientific and Synthetic Aperture Radar remote sensing payloads. The BCP 5000’s power, stability, agility, and data storage and transmission capability together meet the requirements to deliver comprehensive Earth remote sensing information.

DigitalGlobe previously selected Ball Aerospace to build QuickBird, and the companies have been collaborating on the WorldView-1 satellite since March 2004. WorldView-1 supports DigitalGlobe’s NextView contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and commercial customers around the world.