Maxar lofts WorldView Legion satellite duo for new dawn-to-dusk coverage

WASHINGTON — Maxar Intelligence, in partnership with the Space Force’s Commercial Integration Cell (CIC), today launched its second pair of WorldView Legion remote sensing satellites — stationed in a new orbital configuration that will enable dawn-to-dusk coverage, according to the company.

“The satellites are successfully communicating with Maxar’s ground teams. They are now going through the commissioning process, with first images expected in the early fall,” the company said in a press release.

Maxar Intelligence is owned by private equity firm Advent International, which bought Maxar Technologies in December 2022 and split the company into two units last September.

The CIC program is run by the Space Force’s component command to US Space Command, Space Forces-Space. It is designed to facilitate integration and interoperability between military operators and commercial space firms, and helps integrate participating firms into the service’s Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC) to trade information on threats. CIC worked closely with Maxar in launching its first two WorldView Legion satellites in May.

Maxar, via its predecessor Digital Globe, also has a long-standing relationship with the National Reconnaissance Office to provide electro-optical Earth imagery.

The WorldView Legion pair launched today are in a mid-inclination orbit at about 450 kilometers in altitude that covers most of the world’s most populated areas — whereas others in the constellation will be in a more common sun-synchronous orbit. Their addition to the constellation means Maxar now can provide coverage dawn-to-dusk, the company release explains.

Susanne Hake, general manager of Maxar Intelligence, told Breaking Defense in an interview during the annual GEOINT conference in May that having a mix of orbital positions allows a wider variety of imagery that can show a target from different points of view, as well as at different times.

“The reason that that’s valuable to understand is that it allows us to collect more imagery at sort of more angles, more temporal diversity for what we’re collecting,” she said.

Maxar touts the WorldView legion constellation as a significant enhancement to its earlier set of four satellites. With the addition of the WorldView Legion satellites, Maxar will be able to provide collection of high resolution imagery, down to about 30 centimeters, of one spot every 20 to 30 minutes.

Maxar plans to launch two more WorldView Legion satellites later this year, to complete the six-bird constellation. When completed, the constellation will “be able to revisit certain areas of the world up to 15 times a day,” Hake said.

Further, Maxar last year became the first company to win a license to use its remote sensing satellites to image other satellites, thus providing space domain awareness.