WorldView-3 spacecraft to enhance Longmont firm's high-resolution imagery capabilities<\/p>\n
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has completed assembly of its WorldView-3, the fourth remote-sensing satellite it has built for DigitalGlobe, scheduled to launch this summer from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. <\/p>\n
The WorldView-3 spacecraft is billed by Ball Aerospace as the first multi-payload, super-spectral high resolution commercial satellite for Earth observations and \"advanced geospatial solutions.\" <\/p>\n
Ball, in addition to the satellite bus, will provide an atmospheric instrument that it calls CAVIS - Cloud, Aerosol, Water Vapor, Ice, Snow. <\/p>\n
CAVIS, integrated with the spacecraft, will monitor the atmosphere and provide correction data to enhance WorldView-3's imagery when it documents Earth features through dust, haze or other things that might impair visibility. <\/p>\n
DigitalGlobe, based in Longmont but moving to Westminster next year, claims to own and operate one of the most agile and sophisticated collections of high-resolution commercial Earth imaging satellites in the world, capable of collecting more than 1 billion square kilometers of high-quality imagery every year. <\/p>\n
WorldView-3 is described by Ball Aerospace as building on WorldView-2 and WorldView-1 technology by enhancing the satellite's control moment gyroscopes, which reorient a satellite over a targeted area in 4-to-5 seconds, compared to the 30-to-45 seconds required for traditional reaction wheels. <\/p>\n
WorldView-3 utilizes the Ball Configurable Platform BCP 5000 spacecraft, which is designed to handle the next-generation optical and synthetic aperture radar remote sensing payloads, and is currently meeting or exceeding all its performance specifications on the WorldView-2 satellite. <\/p>\n
Companies 'have grown up together' <\/p>\n
For Jeff Dierks, Ball Aerospace program manager for WorldView-3 and its predecessor, WorldView-2, the next step in its partnership with DigitalGlobe only further cements what has been a rich relationship since the early 1990s. <\/p>\n
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Ball Aerospace satellite readied for launch by DigitalGlobe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WorldView-3 spacecraft to enhance Longmont firm's high-resolution imagery capabilities Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has completed assembly of its WorldView-3, the fourth remote-sensing satellite it has built for DigitalGlobe, scheduled to launch this summer from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. The WorldView-3 spacecraft is billed by Ball Aerospace as the first multi-payload, super-spectral high resolution commercial satellite for Earth observations and \"advanced geospatial solutions.\" Ball, in addition to the satellite bus, will provide an atmospheric instrument that it calls CAVIS - Cloud, Aerosol, Water Vapor, Ice, Snow Continue reading