Digital Globe’s WorldView-3 Earth observation satellite was launched August 13, the first commercial Atlas mission to fly out of Vandenberg. WorldView-3 is the first multi-payload, super-spectral, one-foot-resolution commercial satellite. It is intended to operate at an altitude of 617 km and can collect up to 680,000 km² per day. WorldView-3 is capable of
- 31 cm panchromatic resolution
- 1.24 m multispectral resolution (8 bands)
- 3.7 m short-wave infrared resolution (8 bands)
- 30 m Clouds, Aerosols, Vapors, Ice, and Snow (CAVIS) resolution (12 bands)
with an average revisit time of less than 1 day.
Digital Globe has received permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce to sell imagery to all of its customers at up to 25 cm panchromatic and 1.0 m multispectral ground sample distance (GSD) beginning six months after WorldView-3 is operational.
WorldView-3 is now sending images back to Earth. Digital Globe has released some images of Madrid, but is only licensed to release images with 40 cm resolution at this time.

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