A WorldView Legion satellite, launched in early May from Vandenberg Space Force Base, captures an image of City Hall in San Francisco.
A WorldView Legion satellite, launched in early May from Vandenberg Space Force Base, captures an image of City Hall in San Francisco. Credit: Maxar Intelligence courtesy photo

Weeks after arriving in space thanks to a rocket ride from the Central Coast, a commercial Earth-imaging satellite has sent back its initial images. 

Maxar Intelligence recently released the first images from a next-generation WorldView Legion satellite. 

The first two WorldView Legion craft were launched May 2 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The high-resolution, 30 cm-class images (capable of spotting items about 12 inches in size) were collected July 16 by one of Maxar’s WorldView Legion satellites while orbiting Earth. 

Maxar representatives said the firm released images of urban areas, transportation routes and logistics hubs in San Francisco and Sacramento to drive home the high-resolution satellite imagery’s various uses.

“In today’s increasingly complex world, our customers need access to faster, more timely geospatial insights to support their most critical missions — from precision mapping to site monitoring to space domain awareness,” said Dan Smoot, chief executive officer of Maxar Intelligence. “Soon, our WorldView Legion satellites will be collecting vast amounts of imagery, extending our collection capacity advantage for high-resolution imagery and enhancing the revisit rate of our industry-leading constellation.”

A WorldView Legion satellite, launched in early May from Vandenberg Space Force Base, captures an image of soccer fields in San Francisco.
A WorldView Legion satellite, launched in early May from Vandenberg Space Force Base, captures an image of soccer fields in San Francisco. Credit: Maxar Intelligence courtesy photo

Commercial imaging companies tout their products for assorted industries, including monitoring the environment, assessing natural disasters and more.

These two satellites are part of a block of six WorldView Legion satellites. 

Once orbiting Earth, the six satellites will triple Maxar’s capacity to collect imagery, enable dawn-to-dusk collection and allow the firm to get images of the most rapidly changing areas on the planet as often as every 20 to 30 minutes.

A WorldView Legion satellite, launched in early May from Vandenberg Space Force Base, captures an image of a bulk carrier ship in Sacramento.
A WorldView Legion satellite, launched in early May from Vandenberg Space Force Base, captures an image of a bulk carrier ship in Sacramento. Credit: Maxar Intelligence courtesy photo

Although Maxar released some early images, the satellites continue to go through the commissioning and calibration process before being declared fully operational. 

All six WorldView Legion satellites could be in space by the end of 2024, according to Maxar’s schedule.

It’s not clear how the review of the Falcon 9 rocket’s second-stage glitch that left the Starlink satellites in an unusable orbit after lifting off July 11 at Vandenberg will affect the rest of the year’s manifest for SpaceX missions.

— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.