First downlink of Maxar WorldView Legion data to EOC
December 9, 2024
First downlink of Maxar WorldView Legion data to EOC
During the first days of December 2024, the first image data from the new optical very high resolution satellite constellation “WorldView Legion” have been downlinked to the EOC in Oberpfaffenhofen. In a long-lasting scientific cooperation the EOC operates the Direct Access Facility for European Space Imaging (EUSI-DAF).
One of the first WorldView Legion images downlinked to EUSI-DAF at Oberpfaffenhofen during technical tests shows the Trinity College (red mark) located in the center of Ireland’s capital Dublin.
Credit:
2024 Maxar Technologies provided by European Space Imaging
The Munich based EUSI markets the data of the US-American satellite operator MAXAR in Europe. The Cooperation with EUSI opens possibilities for the EOC to further develop its ground segment and improve its mission planning procedures. Furthermore, EOC-scientists get access to commercial very high resolution images for their analysis and methodology development.
The WorldView Legion satellites’ Earth observation data have a spectral resolution of eight bands with a Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) of 1,36 m at Nadir and an additional panchromatic band at 34 cm GSD. An innovation of the new WorldView generation satellites is the additional second Red-edge spectral channel at 730-750 nm wavelength, providing interesting measurements especially for vegetation studies. While two of the new constellation’s six units reinforce the existing fleet of WorldView satellites, operating on classical sun-synchronous polar orbits, the remaining units will fly on mid-inclination low Earth orbits. This results in high revisit rates especially over the densely populated mid-latitude zones of earth.
With four satellites of the constellation already flying, and the remaining two being scheduled for launch in early 2025, DLR operators at EUSI-DAF expect the average daily number of downlink passes in Oberpfaffenhofen to at least double over the medium-term. The increased load will also pose interesting new challenges to the main technical field of cooperation and investigation at the EUSI-DAF: The continuous improvement of acquisition scenarios under consideration of short-term forecasts on cloud coverage, which means to optimize and juggle user requirements against technical acquisition and downlink budgets as well as the weather. An additional established and outstanding asset of the EUSI-DAF is its capacity to provide readily-processed data to users within less than 15 minutes from sensing.
The Collection Cone of the EUSI-DAF facility located at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen
Credit:
EOC Geoservice Basemap/Baseoverlay Data: OpenStreetmap Contributors and others; EUSI-DAF WorldView Legion collection cone: European Space Imaging
In the frame of the scientific cooperation, EUSI shares a defined amount of its data free-of-charge with DLR internal research projects covering a broad variety of topics comprising e.g. auto-navigation support for autonomous driving, disaster emergency support, forest and landcover studies, or urban remote sensing. Currently, a rising demand of selective very-high resolution optical satellite data as validation datasets exists for projects aiming at training AI-based algorithms against large-scale publicly available medium-resolution data as e.g. from the Sentinel satellite fleet.
