I am quite sure that many of us do take advantage of Google Maps and Bing Maps when it comes to checking out how to get about from one place to another in a foreign country, and the high resolution images that both services offer are certainly an added advantage. However, with WorldView-3 being launched, things are about to get a whole lot better. WorldView-3 has been described to be the first multi-payload, super-spectral, high-resolution commercial satellite in the world that caters for earth observations and advanced geospatial solutions.
It will launch later this 13th of August aboard an Atlas rocket, and will operate from an expected altitude of 617km. This means the WorldView-3 will have an average revisit time of under a day, allowing it to capture up to 680,000 square kilometers of imagery each day. Such data-rich imagery will come in handy where the discovery of new sources of minerals and fuels, forest and farm management are concerned.
This would also mean that there is a very real possibility of seeing details such as manhole covers and mailboxes on Google Maps and Bing Maps down the road, since WorldView-3 is owned by DigitalGlobe, where Google and Bing happen to be the company’s customers as well.