Vantor introduced two new satellite classes today that will aim to improve on the company’s imagery resolution and revisit rate.
Meet the sats: These new offerings will build on the 30-cm class imagery provided by Vantor’s WorldView Legion constellation, which offers revisit rates of up to 15 times per day.
- Vantor Vantage will provide 20-cm-class imagery—better than anything available today on the commercial market, the company claims. Two of those sats are expected to begin collecting imagery in 2029.
- Pulse is a fleet of smallsats that is expected to allow 40-cm class imagery to be taken of the same spot every 15 minutes. The first sats in the constellation is expected to start operating next year.
Best of both worlds: EO operators typically offer either super high-res imagery, or fast revisit times. With the addition of these new satellite classes, Vantor is aiming to offer customers both.
That’s especially important for international customers looking to build up a sovereign EO capability from scratch, according to Dan Smoot, Vantor CEO.
“As you fuse data, we see that as a major difference in the marketplace,” he said. “That’s what customers have been asking us to do—to provide fused data to make faster decisions.”
Go small: Pulse—which will be about the size of a fridge—also represents Vantor’s first foray into smallsats. However, the shift doesn’t require any major changes to the company’s manufacturing or supply chain processes.
“We’re taking the same design principles and applying them to a smaller format,” Smoot said.
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