Newly launched commercial satellite has zoom view of Earth

[Buster's Uncle]

Newly launched commercial satellite has zoom view of Earth
Reuters
By Irene Klotz  29 minutes ago



Aug 13 (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Wednesday to put a sharp-eyed, Earth-watching satellite into orbit for DigitalGlobe.

The 188-foot (60-meter) tall booster, built and flown by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, lifted off at 11:30 a.m. (1830 GMT) and headed south over the Pacific Ocean.

About 20 minutes later, the rocket's upper-stage deposited the 6,200-pound (2,800-kg) WorldView-3 satellite into a 380-mile (600-km) polar orbit. At that altitude, WorldView-3 is capable of seeing individual trees in a forest and identifying cars by their windshields.

"Imagine that you were in San Francisco. With the capabilities of this satellite we could see home plate in Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. We can see the players in the field ... We could even count empty seats," DigitalGlobe Vice President Neil Anderson said in an interview during a live launch webcast.

Longmont, Colorado-based DigitalGlobe has been selling images of Earth and data to government agencies, commercial companies, agricultural groups and research organizations since 2000. WorldView-3 will become the sixth member of the company's orbital network.

In addition to being able to image objects as small as about 1 foot (30 cm) in diameter, the $500 million satellite, built by Ball Corp, has new sensors that can see through smoke and atmospheric haze.

"We can tell you what kind of trees are in the forest ... We can tell you what crops are growing, whether they are growing well, whether they're diseased, what the moisture content is in the soil. We can determine manmade objects. We can determine types of roads. We can actually see mineral content on the ground," Anderson said.

DigitalGlobe is not the only company in the remote sensing business. Google Inc in June announced it was buying Skybox Imaging of Mountain View, California, which plans to operate a fleet of 24 small satellites that capture high-resolution images and video.

Another Silicon Valley startup, privately owned Planet Labs, is launching shoebox-sized imaging satellites from aboard the International Space Station. The company plans to operate a constellation of 131 satellites by mid-2015. The U.S. government also has its Landsat program, which began in 1972.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Editing by Jim Loney)


http://news.yahoo.com/newly-launched-commercial-satellite-zoom-204004322.html

[Buster's Uncle]

DigitalGlobe Launches Most Powerful Commercial Earth-Watching Satellite Into Space
SPACE.com
by Mike Wall, Senior Writer  3 hours ago



DigitalGlobe's powerful WorldView-3 Earth-imaging satellite blasts off on Aug. 13, 2014.



The sharpest-eyed commercial Earth-watching satellite ever built soared into space Wednesday (Aug. 13) on a mission to observe our home planet in spectacular detail.

DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3 spacecraft, which can resolve features as small as 1 foot (31 centimeters) across, lifted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT; 11:30 a.m. PDT) Wednesday.

WorldView-3 is designed to peer through fog and smoke to image Earth's surface in detail unprecedented for a nongovernmental spacecraft, DigitalGlobe representatives said. Further, the satellite will gather data in 29 different spectral bands, opening up a wealth of potential uses for its data.

For example, WorldView-3 imagery could help orchard owners keep tabs on their trees from afar, said Kumar Navulur, DigitalGlobe's director of next-generation products.

"We can actually tell you, for each individual tree, how healthy it is," Navulur said Tuesday (Aug. 12) during a prelaunch press briefing. "And potentially there are models that can estimate the yield of each individual tree. That's the power of information we are bringing to the table with WorldView-3."

These capabilities should broaden the customer base for Colorado-based DigitalGlobe into areas such as oil and gas exploration, forestry and agriculture, he added.



Technician working on the WorldView-3 satellite, which Ball Aerospace built for DigitalGlobe.


"We don't play that much in that area today, but I think WorldView-3 will enable us to start accessing those markets," Navulur said.

WorldView-3's high-resolution prowess approaches what aerial photography companies are currently offering, said Jeff Dierks, WorldView-3 program manager at Ball Aerospace, which built the spacecraft for DigitalGlobe.

"A WorldView satellite has a unique capability to basically image anywhere in the world within a day. That's tough to do with an airplane," Dierks told Space.com. "So a company like DigitalGlobe sees an almost limitless market … as they get getter resolution and better imagery."

An instrument aboard WorldView-3 called CAVIS (short for Cloud, Aerosol, water Vapor, Ice, Snow) will help the satellite get a sharp view of the ground despite the presence of dust, soot and other gunk in Earth's atmosphere, Dierks added.

"What you're actually doing with CAVIS is viewing the column in the atmosphere that you are imaging down through, then 'true[ing] up' the color bands of images," he said. "As some of my DigitalGlobe team colleagues say, we can make the Ferrari look red like it’s supposed to."

WorldView-3, which was delivered to a polar orbit 383 miles (617 kilometers) above Earth's surface, joins five other Earth-observation satellites in the DigitalGlobe constellation. The keenest eyes among those other five belong to GeoEye-1, which boasts a resolution of 1.3 feet (41 cm).

WorldView-3 will be able to image 263,000 square miles (680,00 square km) per day, while the entire fleet's capacity is 1.54 million square miles (4 million square km) per day — nearly half the area of the continental United States, DigitalGlobe representatives said.

This broad coverage will allow the fleet to keep track of natural-resource use and human-rights violations around the world — a key part of DigitalGlobe's vision, Navulur said. (George Clooney's Satellite Sentinel Project uses DigitalGlobe imagery to monitor abuses in Sudan and other parts of Africa, and the company recently lent a hand in the search for a missing Malaysian passenger jet.)

"It's all about seeing a better world," Navulur said. "We want to enable our customers to see the Earth clearly and in new ways, and make the Earth a better place."

WorldView-3 weighs 6,200 lbs. (2,812 kilograms) and measures 19 feet tall and 23 feet wide (5.8 by 7 meters) with its solar panels deployed. A series of thruster and instrument checkouts will take place over the next four weeks, and a data-certification process will follow to make sure the satellite's imagery is up to snuff.

"That is all planned to be done by about three months after launch," Dierks said. Given that all goes well, "then we kind of take a step back, and DigitalGlobe takes over."


http://news.yahoo.com/digitalglobe-launches-most-powerful-commercial-earth-watching-satellite-185832792.html

[gwillybj]

About 20 minutes later, the rocket's upper-stage deposited the 6,200-pound (2,800-kg) WorldView-3 satellite into a 380-mile (600-km) polar orbit. At that altitude, WorldView-3 is capable of seeing individual trees in a forest and identifying cars by their windshields.

"Imagine that you were in San Francisco. With the capabilities of this satellite we could see home plate in Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. We can see the players in the field ... We could even count empty seats," DigitalGlobe Vice President Neil Anderson said in an interview during a live launch webcast.

I know these capabilities are nothing new, but I still feel a tad uncomfortable whenever I read about them.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yep.

[Buster's Uncle]

Now In Orbit: A Satellite That Can See Through Smoke
Forbes
Alex Knapp  8/13/2014 @ 4:30PM



A ULA Atlas V lifts off with the Worldview-3 satellite. (Credit: ULA)



On Wednesday, an Atlas V rocket launched into Earth’s orbit, carrying with it what may be the world’s most powerful commercial imaging satellite to date: WorldView-3. This satellite is the latest addition to Earth imaging company DigitalGlobe‘s constellation, and was built by Ball Aerospace.

Operating from a sun-synchronous orbit, the WorldView-3 satellite operates at a 31cm resolution – meaning it can see data points that just over a foot apart. This enables it to take the highest resolution images possible from a commercial satellite. To give you an idea of what this means, if the satellite were over a baseball stadium, it’d be able to make out home plate and the individual players.

“This is a level of resolution was previously only possible from airplanes,” DigitalGlobe’s founder and CTO Dr. Walter Scott told me. “Which are much more expensive to operate and can only be in one place at one time.”

By contrast, WorldView-3 is able to collect much more data – about 680,000 sq. km (262,549 sq. mi.) per day. What’s more, it collects more data than just a simple visual image. Its imaging systems, which were built by Exelis, sees much further into the EM spectrum than the human eye can.

“You can see moisture, identify the types of minerals in the ground, tell the temperature of the air – it’s a level of information never before possible,” Scott told me.



The WorldView-3 satellite. (Credit: DigitalGlobe)


In addition, WorldView-3 is able to image using short-wave infrared. This capability allows the satellite to be able to see through smoke, clouds, fog and other particulates. Something that could be incredibly useful for, say, people trying to figure out how to fight a forest fire. The satellite includes an correction instrument that takes advantage of this ability in order to take clearer visual images, as well.

These systems, not surprisingly, don’t come cheap. Although DigitalGlobe would not share exact costs of building and launching the satellite, Scott told me that the “overall program cost was north of half a billion dollars.”

That’s a hefty price tag, but there’s a large demand for the company’s services. It earns most of its revenue from long, multi-year contracts with governments, location services, the oil and gas industry and other industry verticals. Uses for the images range from defense purposes to water management to better map apps for your phone. The company projects total revenues for 2014 to range from $630 million to $660 million.

The company is already working on its next imaging satellite, WorldView-4, which is currently scheduled to launch in mid-2016.

The satellite was launched Wednesday at 2:30pm EDT from Vandenberg Air Force base in California on an Atlas V rocket. It was a rare commercial payload for United Launch Alliance, which primarily launches payloads for the U.S. government. This is the 6th successful launch in four weeks for the company, and its 10th launch for the year out of a planned 15.

ULA’s next launch will be an Atlas V launch of the CLIO satellite in September. This mission is being undertaken on behalf of an undisclosed U.S. government agency.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2014/08/13/now-in-orbit-a-satellite-that-can-see-through-smoke/?partner=yahootix

[Buster's Uncle]

The newest satellite circling Earth can spot everything from tomato plants to parking spaces
Gigaom
By Signe Brewster  12 hours ago






The most powerful commercial satellite ever made left Lompoc, Calif., today aboard a rocket and is now spending its first evening circling the Earth.

Known as WorldView-3, the satellite joins Earth-imaging company DigitalGlobe’s five existing satellites, which have offered increasingly detailed views of Earth. If you have spent any time looking at Google Earth, you have probably seen an image taken by a DigitalGlobe satellite.

Despite earlier weather concerns and a water leak, the Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket launched at 11:30 a.m. PT as fog crept over the hills behind the Vandenberg Air Force Base launch pad. Twenty minutes later the satellite separated and began its orbit around Earth.



The Atlas V rocket with the WorldView-3 satellite on board minutes before launch. Photo by Signe Brewster.


The 6,200-pound, 18.7-feet-tall WorldView-3 satellite improves the level of detail DigitalGlobe can provide from 15.75 inches to 11.8 inches. That’s enough to suddenly be able to count the number of parking spaces at a shopping mall or identify the location of every manhole and shrub in a city.

“You can actually definitely see (car) windshields,” DigitalGlobe director of next generation products Kumar Navulur said. “We can actually tell you whether it’s a truck or an SUV or a regular car. We can identify pictures of a baseball diamond.”



A trail left by the Atlas V rocket before disappearing out of sight. Photo by Signe Brewster.



The satellite doesn’t just collect images. It can analyze the composition of clouds and gases and determine if a patch of Earth is starved for water. It can tell if alfalfa or opium is growing in a field. It’s built to be able to spot a drought as it develops and then map resulting food shortages and potential unrest.

Earlier this year, DigitalGlobe helped search for the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It also used its satellite fleet to map the damage after the devastating Moore, Okla., tornado last year within an hour. Knowing where roads are blocked and roofs are damaged can both advise a government of the best way to get citizens to the hospital and let insurance companies know exactly who will be in touch.

WorldView-3 will have the ability to collect data on 251,000 square miles of Earth’s surface each day. It can scan from Washington, D.C., to New York City in 45 seconds. With its entire fleet, DigitalGlobe can now map nearly half of the continental U.S. every 24 hours.



The Giza Pyramids in Egypt, as seen by an existing DigitalGlobe satellite. Photo courtesy of DigitalGlobe.


That’s a lot of data. DigitalGlobe relies on cloud computing to crunch the vast majority of it. Its business is not just providing images to customers, but also drawing meaning from them.



The WorldView-3 satellite. Photo courtesy of DigitalGlobe.


“We said, ‘Where are all the football fields in Colorado?’” Navulur said. “Our automated algorithms … are able to identify all the potential football fields in Colorado. We can do it on Colorado state, we can do it on the United States, we can do it anywhere across the globe. Automated data extraction on a global scale is now possible. For the changing planet, we can create a living inventory of various things.”

WorldView-3‘s height above Earth is equivalent to the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco, making its sensing abilities equivalent to spotting an individual human hair across a football field. It collects data with a huge mirror that must be smooth down to the molecular level and positioned incredibly accurately to capture the correct view of Earth.

“If it’s off … by more than the width of a human hair, it’s completely off focus,” Exelis vice president and general manager Rob Mitrevski said.

As computers have grown more powerful, so have satellites. Some of the newest satellites circling Earth are the size of shoeboxes, relying on the equivalent of a mobile phone to collect data. But WorldView-3 is a supercomputer among satellites.

Before WorldView-3, it was illegal to sell images captured from space with an accuracy below 20 inches. DigitalGlobe secured permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce in June to relax that to 15.75 inches. Next year, the limit will drop to 9.84 inches–beyond even what WorldView-3 is capable of capturing.


http://news.yahoo.com/newest-satellite-circling-earth-spot-235335613.html

[Buster's Uncle]

High-res photo satellite launched from California
Associated Press
14 hours ago



VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — A satellite designed to produce high-resolution images of Earth from space was launched Wednesday from a military base on California's Central Coast.

The commercial satellite known as Worldview-3 was sent into space atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a clear day from Vandenberg Air Force Base, military and company officials said.

Worldview-3 belongs to Longmont, Colorado-based DigitalGlobe and was built by Boulder-based Ball Aerospace. Lockheed Martin and the United Launch Alliance are also partners in the $500 million project.

DigitalGlobe says the satellite will be able to capture images of objects as small as 1-foot across.

"From 400 miles we can see home plate of a baseball stadium," said DigitalGlobe Vice President for Technology Neal Anderson.

Until recently that was too small for government regulations to allow, but in June the company received permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce to sell images of objects down to about 10 inches.

The best resolution for the company's five satellites already in orbit is about 16 inches, said Walter Scott, founder and chief technical officer of the Longmont-based company.

The company provides images for government and private customers, including national security and defense agencies, NASA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and civil emergency responders.

The 18-foot-long, 8-foot-wide satellite has a design life of seven years, but satellites often last about twice as long as their design life, Ball Aerospace said.


http://news.yahoo.com/high-res-photo-satellite-launched-california-194920949.html