Ball Aerospace Wins Worldview 2 Contract
Boulder CO (SPX) Jan 03, 2007 Ball Aerospace and Technologies has been selected by DigitalGlobe, provider of the world's highest resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products, to build WorldView 2, its third satellite in a constellation of spacecraft that offer the highest-resolution imagery of Earth. WorldView 2 is the fourth remote-sensing satellite built by Ball Aerospace for Digital Globe. "The WorldView 2 spacecraft bus is the eighth contracted program in our Ball Commercial Platform (BCP) satellite product line," said Ball Aerospace President and CEO, David L. Taylor. "The BCP product line continues to mature in reliability, capability and state-of-the-art technology. The WorldView 2 contract builds upon our heritage of more than 16 years of successful on-orbit mission performance." Ball Aerospace will provide the BCP 5000 for WorldView 2, anticipated to launch in 2008. The spacecraft bus offers increased resolution and target selection flexibility, and accommodates future optical, scientific and Synthetic Aperture Radar remote-sensing payloads. The BCP 5000's power, stability, agility, and data storage and transmission capability, together meet the requirements to deliver comprehensive Earth remote-sensing information. Ball Aerospace is completing integration of the sensor for WorldView 1, scheduled to be on-orbit in mid-2007. Once launched, WorldView 1 will supply half-meter resolution commercial imagery content to DigitalGlobe customers worldwide, and will provide still-higher resolution imaging capability than the Ball Aerospace-built QuickBird satellite. The advanced Control Moment Gyroscopes (CMGs) provided by Ball for WorldView 1 and WorldView 2, afford the satellites the flexibility and agility to capture more imagery than ever before. The addition of WorldView 2 provides the capability of 8-band multispectral pictures at resolutions as sharp as 1.8 meters and panchromatic at half-meter. DigitalGlobe is a leader in the commercial marketplace providing unprecedented imagery with the highest resolution, largest footprint and highest accuracy of any other commercially available satellite imagery in the world. "Since our first successful teaming with the QuickBird launch in October 2001, DigitalGlobe and Ball Aerospace have been making history in meeting the increased demand for Earth imaging collection," said Jill Smith, DigitalGlobe president and CEO. "The WorldView satellites will further enhance our contributions to the geospatial information market." Related Links Ball Aerospace Making money out of watching earth from space today Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters Earth Observation News - Suppiliers, Technology and Application
Afghanistan Opium Cultivation Monitored By International DMC Constellation Of Small Satellites Guildford, UK (SPX) Jan 03, 2007 After extensive trials in 2005, DMC International Imaging (DMCii) won a contract from the UK Government to supply high-resolution satellite coverage of the whole of Afghanistan to support the surveying of opium crops. The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) coordinated by DMCii includes the UK's own satellite, as well as four satellites built at the Surrey Space Centre for other DMC member nations; Algeria, China, Nigeria and Turkey. |
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