Orbview

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The series of OrbView - satellite was for commercial purposes by the US company Orbital Image Corporation develops and Orbital Sciences Corporation. Orbview-1 was launched in 1995 and was the world's first privately developed and operated earth observation satellite.

The Orbview series

  • Orbview-1 was launched on April 3, 1995 with a Pegasus-H rocket. He is no longer active. The satellite, flying at an altitude of 740 km, was mainly used to observe storms and weather systems. His sensor worked in the monochromatic range and had a spatial resolution of 10 km.
  • Orbview-2 was launched in 1997 with a Pegasus XL rocket and was the first satellite that could take daily color images of the ocean and land structures. The main user was NASA , who tried to use himto understand the planet's carbon dioxide cycle andgainknowledge about global warming . Areas of application were fishing industry, coastal observation, shipping, agricultural management. The satellite, flying at an altitude of 705 km, worked in multispectral image mode with 8 channels and had a spatial resolution of 1 km. Since December 2010, the SeaWiFS (Sea Viewing Wide Field of View) earth observation sensor hasfailed. After several months of further contact attempts, the operating company declared the satellite to be a loss in mid-2011.
  • Orbview-3 reached its 470 km high orbit in June 2003 on a Pegasus XL rocket, which has an inclination of 97 ° to the equatorial plane . The 365 kg satellite delivers high-resolution (1 m panchromatic , 4 m multispectral) images over 5 channels. It can be used in telecommunications , cartography and geodesy , the oil and gas industry, agriculture and forestry , and the military . Since March 4, 2007, the satellite has been delivering images of significantly reduced quality.
  • Orbview-4 was launched on September 21, 2001 with a Taurus-2110 rocket from Vandenberg, but did not reach orbit due to a malfunction of the launcher. Orbview-4 should provide high resolution (1 m panchromatic, 4 m multispectral) images.
  • OrbView-5 is a planned satellite that after the acquisition of Orbimage by GeoEye in the name GeoEye-1 has been renamed.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ScienceDaily: SeaWiFS '13 Years of Observing Our Home Planet , April 4, 2011, accessed June 4, 2011