''WorldView-3'' (WV 3) is a commercial
Earth observation satellite
An Earth observation satellite or Earth remote sensing satellite is a satellite used or designed for Earth observation (EO) from orbit, including spy satellites and similar ones intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitorin ...
owned by
DigitalGlobe. It was launched on 13 August 2014 to become DigitalGlobe's sixth satellite in orbit, joining ''
Ikonos'' which was launched in 1999, ''
QuickBird
QuickBird was a high-resolution commercial Earth observation satellite, owned by DigitalGlobe, launched in 2001 and reentered after orbit decay in 2015. QuickBird used Ball Aerospace's Global Imaging System 2000 (BGIS 2000). The satellite colle ...
'' in 2001, ''
WorldView-1'' in 2007, ''
GeoEye-1'' in 2008, and ''
WorldView-2'' in 2009. ''WorldView-3'' provides commercially available
panchromatic imagery of resolution, eight-band multispectral imagery with resolution,
shortwave infrared imagery at resolution, and CAVIS (Clouds, Aerosols, Vapors, Ice, and Snow) data at resolution.
Launch
''WorldView-3'' was launched on 13 August 2014 from
Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to:
* Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name
* USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida
* Vandenberg Sp ...
on an
Atlas V
Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas launch vehicle family. It was originally designed by Lockheed Martin, now being operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed Marti ...
flying in the 401 configuration. The launch vehicle was provided by
United Launch Alliance and launch services were administered by
Lockheed Martin.
Notable uses
Satellite images from ''WorldView-3'' were used in 2015 by an international team of archaeologists to discover what they believe to be a
Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and s ...
settlement on
Point Rosee
Point Rosee (French: ''Pointe Rosée''), previously known as Stormy Point, is a headland near Codroy at the southwest end of the island of Newfoundland, on the Atlantic coast of Canada.
In 2014, archaeologist Sarah Parcak, using near-infra ...
, Newfoundland.
From 2020, Scientists are using ''WorldView-3'' to count and detect wildlife species, including African elephants. They used satellite imagery that required no ground presence to monitor the elephants. The team created a training dataset of 1,000 elephants and fed it to the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and compared the results to human performance.
See also
*
2014 in spaceflight
References
External links
''WorldView-3''at DigitalGlobe.com
Commercial imaging satellites of the United States
Spacecraft launched in 2014
Spacecraft launched by Atlas rockets
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