Maxar is preparing to launch its first two WorldView Legion EO satellites aboard Falcon 9, following years of delays for the new constellation. The launch was slated for today but was pushed back without a determined date.
The introduction of the new WorldView Legion fleet, which will be a six-bird constellation, will add further high-resolution capabilities to Maxar’s arsenal.
“Our goal is to launch six this year,” Susanne Hake, the GM of Maxar Intelligence’s portfolio with the US government, told Payload. “With Legion, we’re going to be able to triple our capacity of collecting and providing 30-cm class resolution imagery.”
WorldView Legion 101: Maxar designed and built the WorldView Legion birds in-house. The satellites will be deployed into SSO and mid-inclination orbits, optimized to cover the world’s most active regions. They will be able to revisit locations up to 15 times a day, which will allow Maxar to perform typical EO missions while also expanding its 3D mapping and space domain awareness capabilities.
3D mapping: “Maxar has been building highly precise 3D data and these 3D globes for a while,” said Hake “Collecting more imagery means we can actually refresh those 3D layers much more often.”
- Maxar offers its 3D mapping capabilities to the Army One World Terrain training program, which requires modeling and simulation.
Flip the camera: In the past, the company’s sole focus was looking down on Earth from its perch in space, but with the new WorldView Legion satellites, Maxar will also turn its cameras around to monitor traffic in orbit, Hake said.
