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Maxar Intelligence Releases First Images from Its Next-Generation WorldView Legion Satellites

07/25/2024

Westminster, Colo. – July 18, 2024 – Maxar Intelligence, a provider of secure, precise geospatial intelligence, today released the first images from its next-generation WorldView Legion satellites, the first two of which were launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on May 2, 2024.  

The high-resolution, 30 cm-class images were collected on July 16, 2024, by one of Maxar’s WorldView Legion satellites on orbit and demonstrate the exceptional capabilities of this state-of-the-art technology. They include detailed images of key urban areas, transportation routes and logistics hubs in San Francisco and Sacramento, California, underscoring the value of high-resolution satellite imagery for precision mapping, site monitoring, geospatial analytics and other important use cases. 

This WorldView Legion image show small details on, and around, San Francisco City Hall, including solar panels on top of the building and lane markings through intersections and streetlamps. The green lanes mark bicycle paths, while the red lanes are dedicated for city transit vehicles. All these details are useful for building foundational maps for government use cases, consumer applications and mobility and logistics planning. This WorldView Legion image shows people playing on soccer fields, with cleanly defined white boundary lines and stadium lights. This WorldView Legion image shows a bulk carrier ship docked in Washington Lake, next to the Sacramento River Deep Water Ship Channel. You can identify that the ship has two cargo holds open and see the current equipment in use for port operations—examples of important details in site monitoring missions. This WorldView Legion image shows the interchange between Highway 50 and Elvas Freeway, southeast of downtown Sacramento, with vehicles in motion and roadway markings clearly visible.

“In today’s increasingly complex world, our customers need access to faster, more timely geospatial insights to support their most critical missions—from precision mapping to site monitoring to space domain awareness,” said Dan Smoot, CEO of Maxar Intelligence. “Soon, our WorldView Legion satellites will be collecting vast amounts of imagery, extending our collection capacity advantage for high-resolution imagery and enhancing the revisit rate of our industry-leading constellation. This added capacity will also strengthen our geospatial foundation, helping us build more sophisticated products that unlock the full potential of geospatial data and generate more actionable insights in 2D and 3D.” 

These two satellites are part of a block of six WorldView Legion satellites. Once on orbit, the six satellites will triple Maxar’s capacity to collect 30 cm-class imagery, enable dawn-to-dusk collection and allow Maxar to image the most rapidly changing areas on Earth as frequently as every 20 to 30 minutes. 

The vast amount of high-resolution imagery collected by these satellites will also enable the company to continue building leading-edge products that deliver faster mission-critical insights: 

  • The capacity increase will fuel the company’s innovation, providing more near-real time data that allows Maxar to deliver software products that leverage modern artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to extract faster insights from geospatial data. 

  • The significant increase in high-resolution capacity will further improve the currency and quality of the company’s 2D and 3D data products.  

  • Customers using Maxar’s tasking products will have more opportunities to collect imagery of areas of interest throughout the day.  

Maxar continues to progress through the commissioning and calibration process for the first two WorldView Legion satellites and expects both satellites to be supporting customer missions soon. Maxar expects to launch all six WorldView Legion satellites by the end of 2024.  

Learn more about our WorldView Legion satellites and how they enhance the capabilities of Maxar’s Earth imaging constellation here: https://www.maxar.com/worldview-legion  

Update: On July 25, 2024, Maxar Intelligence released the first images from the second WorldView Legion satellite launched in May 2024. These images are of Singapore, South Africa, Spain and Brazil and reflect the high-quality capabilities of the newest satellites to join the Maxar constellation. 

This 32-degree off-nadir WorldView Legion image of downtown Singapore demonstrates the agility of the new WorldView Legion satellites. At this angle, windows can clearly be distinguished, company logos can be read, and the number of stories can be counted on the sides of skyscrapers. The famous Fullerton Hotel Singapore is in the foreground of the image. WorldView Legion collected an image of Johannesburg, South Africa, showing the Nelson Mandela Bridge (right) and De Villiers Graaff Motorway (left) spanning the large railyard adjacent to Johannesburg Park Station, a main train terminal in the city. Individual rail lines and overhead line equipment, as well as dozens of rail cars, can be seen in this image. This busy plaza in Madrid, Spain, is called Puerta del Sol, or Gate of the Sun, and it is home to the marker for the beginning of the radial road network in Spain as well as two famous statues. In this WorldView Legion image, the streets across the bottom of the image have colorful fabric strung between the buildings to provide shade for the pedestrians. WorldView Legion collected an image of surfers catching waves while people stroll along Leblon Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Crosswalks, road markings and bike lanes are visible in paint while pedestrian walkways are defined by the area’s famous mosaic sidewalks.

About Maxar Intelligence 

Maxar Intelligence is a provider of secure, precise, geospatial intelligence. We deliver disruptive value to government and commercial customers to help them monitor, understand and navigate our changing planet. Our unique approach combines decades of deep mission understanding and a proven commercial and defense foundation to deploy solutions and deliver insights with unrivaled speed, scale and cost effectiveness. For more information, visit www.maxar.com.