WorldView-3 Satellite Placed In Orbit - Spots "Tomato Plants" From LEO

[burntheships]

More eyes in the sky, watch out backyard tomato plant growers.

VANDENBERG AFB, California – DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3, the most sophisticated super-spectral, high-resolution commercial satellite yet developed, has been placed in a polar low Earth orbit following its successful launch here Aug. 13.

Built by Ball Aerospace and launched at 11:29 a.m. Pacific time on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401, the spacecraft will be the first in the U.S. to provide detailed imagery to commercial users at resolution levels previously reserved for the U.S. military and government intelligence community. The sensor package on WorldView-3 will be able to image objects with a ground sample distance of 31 cm (12 in.). "So we can tell you if it's a truck, SUV or a regular car," says Kumar Navulur, director of next-generation products at DigitalGlobe. "If there's a high contrast we can identify features of fine scale," he adds, giving examples of markings in a parking lot or "a tomato plant in a backyard in Asia."

http://aviationweek.com/space/high-res-worldview-3-satellite-placed-orbit

[Sinny]

Cool..

Does anyone recall hearing about a 3 million (or billion) pixel camera that was just like... Awesome?? Few years back, fetured on ATS?

[ArMaP]

Does anyone recall hearing about a 3 million (or billion) pixel camera that was just like... Awesome?? Few years back, fetured on ATS?

I think I remember something like that, but all those pixels are useless if the lens is not good enough.

And I suppose it would be American billions (10⁹), any common camera has more than a million pixels.

Edit: this was what I was thinking about.