DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe (formerly EarthWatch) was an American commercial vendor of space imagery and geospatial content, and operator of civilian remote sensing spacecraft. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange on 14 May 2009, selling 14.7 million shares at US$19.00 each to raise US$279 million in capital. On 5 October 2017, Maxar Technologies completed its acquisition of DigitalGlobe.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref>

The company's "WorldView" satellites should not be confused with the unrelated WorldView company (a stratospheric balloon operator).

Origins

WorldView Imaging Corporation was founded in January 1992 in Oakland, California in anticipation of the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act (enacted in October 1992), which permitted private companies to enter the satellite imaging business.<ref name="eomonline.com">Template:Cite web</ref> Its founder was Walter Scott, who was joined by co-founder and CEO Doug Gerull in late 1992. In 1993, the company received the first high resolution commercial remote sensing satellite license issued under the 1992 Act.<ref name="digitalglobehistory">Template:Cite web</ref> The company was initially funded with private financing from Silicon Valley sources and interested corporations in North America, Europe and Japan. Dr. Scott was head of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories "Brilliant Pebbles" and "Brilliant Eyes" projects which were part of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Doug Gerull was the executive in charge of the Mapping Sciences division at the Intergraph Corporation.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The company's first remote sensing license from the United States Department of Commerce allowed it to build a commercial remote sensing satellite capable of collecting images with Template:Cvt resolution.<ref name="eomonline.com"/>

In 1995, the company became EarthWatch Incorporated, merging WorldView with Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.'s commercial remote sensing operations.<ref name="companyhistory">Template:Cite web</ref>

In September 2001, EarthWatch became DigitalGlobe.<ref name="nasa">Template:Cite web Template:PD-notice</ref>

In 2007, DigitalGlobe acquired online imagery provider GlobeXplorer to extend its imagery distribution capabilities via online APIs and web services.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2011, DigitalGlobe was inducted into the Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame for its role in advancing commercial Earth-imaging satellites.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2013, DigitalGlobe purchased GeoEye.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In February 2017, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) and DigitalGlobe reached an agreement for MDA to acquire DigitalGlobe for US$2.4 billion.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> As of May 2017, DigitalGlobe's image catalog contains 100 petabytes worth of data, and grows by 100 terabytes each day.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> As of 5 October 2017, MDA has announced it has completed its acquisition of DigitalGlobe.<ref name=":1"/> On 5 October 2017, DigitalGlobe and MDA Holdings Company merged to become Maxar Technologies<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On 30 December 2019, the company announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell MDA to a consortium of financial sponsors led by Northern Private Capital for CAD$1 billion (US$765 million). The sale included all of MDA's Canadian businesses, encompassing ground stations, radar satellite products, robotics, defense, and satellite components, representing approximately 1,900 employees.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On 8 April 2020, the sale of the MDA assets to NPC officially closed. The newly formed privately held Canadian company was named MDA.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Satellites

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.<ref>Template:Cite web Template:PD-notice</ref> It had a mass of Template:Cvt and a design life of 3 years (fuel reserves for 5 years). It included a panchromatic (black-and-white) camera with a Template:Cvt resolution and a multispectral (color) camera with a Template:Cvt resolution. The imaging sensor was derived from a 1998-cancelled NASA satellite called Clark (SSTI 2).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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 Template:Cvt resolution and multispectral (color) imagery with Template:Cvt resolution.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

QuickBird

QuickBird, launched on 18 October 2001,<ref name="companyhistory"/> 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 Template:Cvt 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 Template:Cvt resolution and a multispectral camera with a Template:Cvt resolution. On 27 January 2015, QuickBird was de-orbited, exceeding her initial life expectancy by nearly 300%.<ref name=":0"/>

GeoEye-1

The GeoEye-1 satellite collects images at Template:Cvt panchromatic (black-and-white) and Template:Cvt multispectral resolution. The satellite can collect up to Template:Cvt 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.<ref name=sfn1>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It included a panchromatic only camera with a Template:Cvt 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The satellite includes a panchromatic sensor with a Template:Cvt maximum resolution and a multispectral sensor of Template:Cvt<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

WorldView-3

Ball Aerospace built WorldView-3. It was launched on 13 August 2014. It has a maximum resolution of Template:Cvt. WorldView-3 operates at an altitude of Template:Cvt, 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 Template:Cvt.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Previously, DigitalGlobe was only licensed to sell images with a higher resolution than Template:Cvt to the U.S. military.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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 Template:Cvt panchromatic and Template:Cvt 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

WorldView-3 is the industry's first multi-payload, super-spectral, high-resolution commercial satellite.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

WorldView-4

The WorldView-4 satellite was designed to provide panchromatic images at a highest resolution of Template:Cvt, and multispectral images at Template:Cvt.<ref name="dgwv4-faq">Template:Cite web</ref> Originally named GeoEye-2, the spacecraft was designed and built by Lockheed Martin,<ref name="spacenews20100311">Template:Cite news</ref> while the camera payload was provided by ITT Corporation.<ref name="exelis20120410">Template:Cite press release</ref>

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.<ref name="digiglobe20130204">Template:Cite press release</ref><ref name="sfnow20130204">Template:Cite news</ref> It was renamed to WorldView-4 in July 2014, when the company announced that it would be launched in Fall 2016.<ref name="digiglobe20140731">Template:Cite press release</ref><ref name="denver20140731">Template:Cite news</ref> It was launched on 11 November 2016.

In January 2019, Maxar reported the failure of a control moment gyroscope on the satellite, rendering it inoperable.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Customers and competitors

DigitalGlobe's customers range from urban planners, to conservation organizations like the Amazon Conservation Team,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> to the U.S. federal agencies, including NASA<ref name="nasa"/> and the United States Department of Defense's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Much of Google Earth and Google Maps high resolution-imagery is provided by DigitalGlobe.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

DigitalGlobe's main competitor was Airbus with Spot and Pleiades satellites.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• Photogrammetry
• Remote sensing
• Satellite Sentinel Project
• Tomnod, a DigitalGlobe project that uses crowdsourcing to identify objects and places in satellite images.

External links

• Template:Official website