Five years ago today — September 18, 2007 — DigitalGlobe launched WorldView 1, a commercial remote sensing satellite, from Vandenberg AFB on a Delta II rocket.
(WorldView 1 image of President Obama’s inauguration. Image from DigitalGlobe site, for editorial use; available for purchase in their online store.)
WorldView 1 was built by Ball Aerospace for DigitalGlobe, and featured a “panchromatic” camera — sensitive to all colors in the visible spectrum — with half-meter resolution. Even though it’s a commercial imager, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency was among its primary customers.
Here’s a complete data sheet about the satellite.
DigitalGlobe launched the WorldView 2 companion spacecraft in December 2009.
___
Note: I tried to find DigitalGlobe’s “Images for the Media” page (http://www.digitalglobe.com/press/images_media.shtml), to pull an image they had already tagged for editorial use, but that section of their web site appeared no longer to exist.
by 
