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DigitalGlobe's new satellite view is twice as sharp

New satellite from DigitalGlobe sends supersharp images for military and commercial use.

Mark Rutherford
The military establishment's ever increasing reliance on technology and whiz-bang gadgetry impacts us as consumers, investors, taxpayers and ultimately as the defended. Our mission here is to bring some of these products and concepts to your attention based on carefully selected criteria such as importance to national security, originality, collateral damage to the treasury and adaptability to yard maintenance-but not necessarily in that order. E-mail him at markr@milapp.com. Disclosure.
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Mark Rutherford
DigitalGlobe

A global leader in commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information has just doubled up.

DigitalGlobe has released photos captured by its WorldView-1 remote sensing satellite launched in September that have twice the resolution of previous images, allowing viewers to see things on the ground as small as 20 inches in diameter. The black and white shots captured with equipment developed by ITT's Space Systems Division are part of a program sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to provide imagery for military, intelligence, foreign policy, homeland security, and civil use.

They include shots of Houston, Texas, Yokohama, Japan, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To date, the company's library contains more than 300 million square kilometers of satellite and aerial imagery. The unit is capable of collecting 290,000 square miles of images every day, according to the company, which promises to produce the "most advanced imagery ever seen."

DigitalGlobe

The new gear is four times more power-efficient, six times lighter, and costs a third as much as previous models, according to ITT. The system captures "panchromatic" imagery, multispectral imagery across a wide swath, the end product is a 11x11 kilometer snapshot.

If you hold out until 2008, the company promises to deliver "lifelike true color" with an ITT eight-band, multispectral system from aboard the WorldView-2. And speaking of the NGA, it offers a Baghdad reference map, plus tons of other cool stuff available to the public here.