DigitalGlobe Wins Permission To Sell Higher Resolution Imagery

Commercial satellite imagery company DigitalGlobe announced today that it has received permission from the U.S. government to collect and sell satellite imagery with greater resolution than allowed in the past.  The company has been seeking a change to the resolution restriction for quite some time.

Under the new limits, DigitalGlobe can collect and sell imagery as sharp as 0.25 meters (m) instead of 0.50 m.  Until now, if the satellite could image the Earth with greater accuracy, the company had to degrade the data so it had only the allowable resolution.  (Resolution is essentially the ability to “see” an object on Earth.)   Beginning immediately, it may sell the imagery from its existing satellites at its “native” resolution.   DigitalGlobe, after its merger with competitor GeoEye in 2013, operates a fleet of five high-resolution imaging satellites, two of which can provide better than 0.50 m resolution with their panchromatic (black and white) sensors:  GeoEye-1 (0.41 m) and WorldView-2 (0.46 m). 

The WorldView-3 satellite is scheduled for launch in August 2014.  It will have 0.31 m resolution.  Six months after it is operational, DigitalGlobe will be allowed to offer imagery with that resolution for sale to commercial customers.

DigitalGlobe CEO Jeffrey Tanber thanked Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker as well as the Departments of Defense and State and the Intelligence Community for making this “forward-leaning change to our nation’s policy.”

DigitalGlobe also operates Ikonos, QuickBird, WorldView-1 and GeoEye-1.   Another satellite, GeoEye-2, also with 0.31 m resolution, is under construction.

The U.S. government has steadily relaxed image resolution limits for commercial imaging satellites since commercial satellite remote sensing was first envisioned in the 1980s.  NOAA, which is part of the Department of Commerce, is responsible for licensing commercial remote sensing satellites under the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act, which replaced the 1984 Land-Remote Sensing Commercialization Act.  The resolution limits reflect a tension between those who want to restrict availability of the very best imagery to those involved in protecting U.S. national security and those who want to make such data widely available for multiple uses and to more easily enable sharing with other countries.