WorldView-3 Remote Sensing Spacecraft Arrives at Vandenberg Air Force Base for Launch

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Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has delivered the next-generation commercial remote sensing satellite built for DigitalGlobe, to the launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The WorldView-3 satellite is slated to fly aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in mid-August for DigitalGlobe, a leading provider of commercial high-resolution earth observation and advanced geospatial solutions.

 

The WorldView-3 spacecraft passed a full suite of environmental, functional and performance tests in preparation for integration with the launch vehicle, along with thorough pre-ship reviews by Ball Aerospace and DigitalGlobe.

WorldView-3 is the first multi-payload, super-spectral, high-resolution commercial satellite for earth observations and advanced geospatial data. Operating at an expected altitude of 617 km, WorldView-3 will collect imagery with 31 cm resolution. This level of resolution performance would be fundamentally impossible without the 1.1 m aperture telescope and the primary visible/SWIR sensor built by Exelis, which allows for a breadth of applications unmatched by smaller, lower-performance satellites. DigitalGlobe recently received permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce to sell its higher resolution satellite imagery, and once WorldView-3 is operational, the company will be able to deliver imagery with significantly greater clarity and spectral depth than anything else on the commercial market.

 

WorldView-3 also carries a Ball Aerospace-built atmospheric instrument called CAVIS, which stands for Clouds, Aerosol, water Vapor, Ice, and Snow. CAVIS will monitor the atmosphere and provide correction data when WorldView-3 images earth objects through haze, aerosols or other atmospheric obscurants.

 

source :

http://www.sensorsandsystems.com/news/top-stories/corporate-news/34266-worldview-3-remote-sensing-spacecraft-arrives-at-vandenberg-air-force-base-for-mid-august-launch.html