Maxar Technologies is on track for the launch of its next-generation WorldView Legion satellites in 2021. The satellites, six in number, will be launched in two phases – in batches of two and four – in the first half and second half of 2021, respectively, senior company executives said. They are scheduled to go up in SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.
The launches are absolutely on schedule and are tied to our current business plans based on existing market demands, Dr Kumar Navulur, Senior Director of Strategic Growth, Maxar Technologies said while responding to a specific question on whether the launches are dependent on external business investment and if there was a risk that some of the legion capacity will be deferred to 2022-23.
Dr Navulur, along with his colleagues Chris Formeller and Kathryn Seitz, were presenting an overview of of the Legion constellation at GeoIgnite 2020 virtual event.
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Maxar had budgeted $600 million for building and launching the first six Legion satellites. In contrast, the WorldView-4 satellite cost $850 million. Each WorldView Legion satellite is expected to collect about half as much imagery as WorldView-4. The company lost WorldView 4 in early 2019 after a technical failure.
The Legion satellites will be much smaller than the traditional big satellites that Maxar has launched so far.
3% of Earth, up to 15 revisits every day!
The first constellation of WorldView Legion will comprise of six satellites, designed and built in house, that will fly Sun synchronous and mid inclination orbits. Once all the six satellites are launched, they will treble Maxar’s high resolution 30 cm coverage of Earth. Legion’s sensors are built by Raytheon Intelligence & Space.
The new constellation has the ability to capture 5 million sq km a day, at 29 cm resolution and better than 5 meter accuracy. The total land mass of the Earth is about 150 sq km, and this means the new constellation will be able to capture 3% of that every day.
Some of the regions on Earth, including much of the lower 48 states of the US, will be captured up to 15 times per day, while over regions like Canada the coverage will be around 8 times a day.
While Legion’s revisit rate will enable more real-time, actionable analysis to deliver insights into rapid change on ground, some Legion satellites in the mid-inclination orbit means, availability of imagery at different local times of a day unlike with satellites in Sun synchronous orbits which capture imagery at a certain local time every day.
Combined with the high-resolution imagery from WorldView 3 and its overall imaging capabilities, Legion will enable Maxar to better support applications that require accurate Earth Intelligence with frequent updates on changing ground conditions for enhanced monitoring for national security agencies, accurate mapping which is a key component for infrastructure and autonomous vehicle technology, and of course enhanced support for emergency response in times of natural disasters.
Accurate 3D imaging
With the Legion’s increased capacity and revisit, Maxar also expects to be able to more quickly and accurately generate 3D models of the Earth, and continue to capture changes in them. The company recently took full ownership of Vricon, the 3D data and analytics JV it had earlier with Saab.
“The Vricon software works on stacks and stacks of Maxar’s imagery and the Legion program will supercharge the Vricon machine,” Maxar CEO Dan Jablonsky had said during the acquisition. “We will be able to create photo-realistic, 3D accurate data models overnight essentially, by harnessing the two capabilities together.”
With Maxar’s entire 110-petabyte imagery archive fueling Vricon’s porducts, there will be faster, scalable and global availability of 3D models of Earth. The higher volumes of more frequently refreshed, high-resolution imagery from Legion, the company expects will further improve the 3D models and allow its customers to truly keep up with the changes on our planet at an unprecedented speed.
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