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WorldView-2

Commercial Earth observation satellite

WorldView-2 (WV 2) is a commercial Earth observation satellite owned by Vantor (formerly DigitalGlobe). WorldView-2 provides commercially available panchromatic imagery of 0.46 m (18 in) resolution, and eight-band multispectral imagery with 1.84 m (72 in) resolution.

It was launched 8 October 2009 to become DigitalGlobe's third satellite in orbit, joining WorldView-1 which was launched in 2007 and QuickBird which was launched in 2001. It takes a new photograph of any place on Earth every 1.1 days.

01Design

Ball Aerospace built the spacecraft, which includes an optical telescope that can image objects 18 in (460 mm) in diameter.

02Launch

WorldView-2 was launched 8 October 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Delta II flying in the 7920 configuration. The launch vehicle was provided by the United Launch Alliance and launch services were administered by Boeing.

03History

On 19 July 2016, the Joint Space Operations Center reported a debris causing event of at least 9 observable pieces, after which DigitalGlobe demonstrated the satellite to still be functional by releasing an image of downtown Oakland, California.

Watch videos about WorldView-2Explainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article WorldView-2, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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