Company FAQs
DigitalGlobe® is an earth imaging and information company. It was founded in 1992 and, that same year, was the first company ever to receive a high resolution commercial remote sensing license from the U.S. Government under the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act. DigitalGlobe launched its QuickBird satellite in October 2001 and WorldView-1 satellite in September 2007 making it the world’s only company with a constellation of sub-meter commercial imaging satellites. Today, DigitalGlobe employs greater than 300 people and is leading the industry into the next generation of commercial satellite imaging.
DigitalGlobe currently operates the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite constellation. Through the technical superiority of our satellite systems, our high standards regarding product quality, customer service and business partner relationships and our entrepreneurial spirit and “easy-to-work with” business style, DigitalGlobe is the clear market leader providing accurate, high resolution geospatial content to the world.
DigitalGlobe is also the only geospatial content provider to take a beginning-to-end approach to supplying geospatial imagery, from acquiring proprietary high resolution images through a leading edge satellite and aerial network, to integrating and distributing that data through our proprietary web-based search and retrieval system that makes global imagery easy to find, purchase and download.
QuickBird is DigitalGlobe’s frontier satellite that collects imagery of the earth with the highest resolution, largest footprint and highest accuracy of any other commercially available satellite imagery in the world. QuickBird’s high resolution camera model captures images that reveal objects on the ground as small as 60 centimeters – or two feet. The satellite was launched in October 2001, and its images were first made available to the global commercial marketplace in May 2002.
WorldView-1, built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation with the imaging sensor provided by ITT Corporation, is a high capacity, panchromatic imaging system featuring half meter resolution imagery. With an average revisit time of 1.7 days, WorldView-1 can collect up to 750,000 square kilometers (290,000 square miles) per day of half meter imagery. Frequent revisits increase image collection opportunities, enhance change detection applications and enable accurate map updates.
The satellite can collect, store and downlink more frequently updated global imagery products than any other commercial imaging satellite in orbit, which allows expedited image capture, processing and delivery to customers where speed is a driving factor. WorldView-1 is equipped with state-of-the-art geolocation accuracy capability and exhibits unprecedented agility with rapid targeting and efficient in-track stereo collection.
Yes. WorldView-2 is anticipated to launch in mid-2009, bringing DigitalGlobe’s number of satellites in orbit to three and enabling the company to offer a constellation of spacecraft that provide the highest collection capacity – more than 1 million square kilometers per day – of high resolution earth imagery directly to customers around the world.
DigitalGlobe is a privately held company and the first commercial remote sensing company to receive significant Wall Street investment.
DigitalGlobe is building a long term, sustainable, high growth business to drive value for our shareholders. To date we are successful on all counts and anticipate continuing to do so going forward.
The company’s investors include Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Morgan Stanley and Telespazio S.P.A/Eurimage Investment.