WorldView 3, the successor to WorldView2 that I posted about for the Whale study in June (it has the coastal blue band) has just gone into orbit. It usually takes these systems quite a while to get calibrated, come online, start releasing accurate data - but when it does, WorldView 3 will be returning images at a spatial resolution of 31cm. It mentions 31cm in the headline, 31cm further down in the text but then states it will be 41cm in panchromatic mode. Panchromatic images are (always?) sharper than those returned from the multispectral sensors on a satellite, so I'm guessing that's a typo and it really is 31cm. The UAVs I posted about a few months back that fly at around 120m AGL are returning amazing resolution orthoimages - 5cm ground sampling distance - but WorldView3 is in SPACE! WorldView 3 is the new benchmark for spatial resolution. No images yet - but I can't wait to see them.
This is only possible because the US Gov lifted a ban recently prohibiting sale of images sharper than 50cm to anyone but the US Gov. Or was it the DoD?
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