History
DigitalGlobe in the 1990s
In 1993, the United States Department of Commerce granted DigitalGlobe’s predecessor, WorldView Imaging Corporation (WorldView), the first license allowing a private enterprise to build and operate a satellite system to gather high resolution digital imagery of the earth for commercial sale. WorldView designed its first spacecraft, EarlyBird-1, to collect 3 meter resolution panchromatic and 15 meter multispectral imagery.
In January 1995, EarthWatch Incorporated (EarthWatch) was formed by the merger of the commercial remote sensing efforts of Ball Aerospace and WorldView. Ball brought significant communications and optics experience in building satellites. Examples include the RadarSat spacecraft for Canada and the CoStar instrument for NASA that successfully corrected the Hubble Space Telescope. Ball was responsible for the design and construction of EarthWatch’s QuickBird sub meter satellites.
During 1996 and 1997, EarthWatch developed an order processing and manufacturing system, implemented ground infrastructure and constructed the EarlyBird satellite. EarlyBird-1 was successfully launched on December 24, 1997 aboard a Start-1 rocket from Svobodny, Russia. However, the satellite failed on orbit 4 days later due to a problem with the onboard power system. Despite extensive efforts, EarthWatch was unable to regain communications with the satellite. In April 1998, EarthWatch declared the satellite a loss and used the insurance proceeds to help fund continuing construction of the QuickBird satellites. EarthWatch decided not to proceed with the launch of a second EarlyBird, as the market window for 3 meter resolution data had closed.
DigitalGlobe 2000 to the Present
In November 2000, EarthWatch launched QuickBird-1 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. QuickBird-1 failed to reach proper orbit and was declared a loss.
DigitalGlobe successfully launched QuickBird-2 on October 18, 2001. In addition to Ball Aerospace, DigitalGlobe contracted with Eastman Kodak Company and Fokker Space B.V. for the design, development and fabrication of QuickBird.
In 2002, EarthWatch became DigitalGlobe – a change in name and focus to more accurately reflect the goals of the company. DigitalGlobe products would provide the solutions to meet customer’s project needs. DigitalGlobe intended to assemble a multisource digital archive of spatial data to provide up to date earth information.
Following the successful launch of QuickBird-2, DigitalGlobe began building an extensive business partner network, promoting and open system philosophy that made the company the preferred supplier of imagery products to government and commercial markets.
In September 2003, DigitalGlobe announced it won a $500 million contract issued by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to assure the availability of imagery from the next generation, commercial high resolution imaging satellites. DigitalGlobe subsequently announced plans to build two next generation, high resolution imagery satellites, WorldView-1 and WorldView-2.
On January 8, 2007, DigitalGlobe announced it acquired GlobeXplorer, a leading geographic data integration and publishing company. DigitalGlobe’s industry leading archive and high resolution, high capacity satellite with GlobeXplorer’s effective web based search and delivery applications combined to create the industry’s most extensive, complete and easy to use solution for acquiring, integrating and distributing all types of high quality digital earth imagery and data.
On September 18, 2007, WorldView-1 successfully launched on a Boeing Delta II 7920 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA. Shortly after the launch, a DigitalGlobe ground station received a downlink signal confirming that the satellite successfully separated from its launch vehicle and had automatically initialized its onboard processors.
In mid-2009 DigitalGlobe will launch WorldView-2, bringing the total number of satellites DigitalGlobe has in orbit to 3 and enabling the company to offer a constellation of spacecraft that will provide the highest collection capacity – more than 1 million square kilometers per day – of high resolution earth imagery directly to customers around the world.