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Maxar debuts never-before-seen shots from its new, next-generation satellites

Senior officials briefed DefenseScoop on what warfighters can expect from the company’s growing arsenal of new capabilities.
The Pentagon, captured on July 16 by Maxar's WorldView Legion satellite. (Maxar)

The Pentagon’s top supplier of commercial electro-optical imagery, Maxar, debuted the first images captured by its second, next-generation WorldView Legion satellite exclusively with DefenseScoop on Thursday.

These extremely high-resolution pictures of precise locations in Singapore, South Africa, Spain and Brazil — as well as never-before shared images of the Pentagon from the first WorldView Legion — demonstrate what Maxar’s newest, still-growing constellation of cutting-edge satellites offer to the Defense Department and Intelligence Community in the near term.

“The first images from both WorldView Legion satellites are a major step forward for the geospatial industry,” Susanne Hake, Maxar Intelligence’s general manager for U.S. government, told DefenseScoop in an email on Thursday.

“We’re on track to triple our 30 cm imagery capacity, revisit areas of interest up to 15 times per day, and collect images from dawn-to-dusk. These advancements will give warfighters what they really need: real-time, actionable insights,” she explained.

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On May 2, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the first pair of new WorldView Legion Earth observation satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Equipped with sophisticated cameras, automated features and other innovative capabilities to collect distinct images of happenings on Earth’s surface, these next-gen platforms mark the first two in orbit of Maxar’s planned six-sat WorldView Legion fleet.

Ultimately, this fleet was designed to enable the highest electro-optical imagery resolution commercially available for DOD at the time of its development.  

The initial four images taken by the second WorldView legion satellite show sharp, clear details that the systems can pick up on — like umbrellas and vehicles seen below:   

Singapore: This 32-degree off-nadir image demonstrates the agility of the new WorldView Legion satellites. At this angle, windows can clearly be distinguished, company logos can be read, and the number of stories can be counted on the sides of skyscrapers. The famous Fullerton Hotel Singapore is in the foreground of the image. (Maxar)
Johannesburg, South Africa: The Nelson Mandela Bridge (right) and De Villiers Graaff Motorway (left) span the large railyard adjacent to Johannesburg Park Station, a main train terminal in the city. Individual rail lines and overhead line equipment, as well as dozens of rail cars, can be seen in this image. (Maxar)
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Madrid, Spain: This busy plaza is called Puerta del Sol, or Gate of the Sun, and it is home to the marker for the beginning of the radial road network in Spain as well as two famous statues. The streets across the bottom of the image have colorful fabric strung between the buildings to provide shade for the pedestrians. (Maxar)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Surfers catch waves while people stroll along Leblon Beach, which is dotted with occasional umbrellas. Crosswalks, road markings and bike lanes are visible in paint while pedestrian walkways are defined by the area’s famous mosaic sidewalks. (Maxar)

While the company previously released its initial images from the first WorldView Legion satellite last week, on Thursday Maxar provided DefenseScoop with images of Washington taken by the system that had not yet been shared publicly.

The United States Capitol, captured on July 16. (Maxar)
The Pentagon, captured on July 16. (Maxar)
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The White House, captured on July 16. (Maxar)

A Maxar spokesperson said the company is currently preparing for the second launch of satellites for this next-gen fleet, and that they hope to share more details soon.

“The third and fourth WorldView Legion satellites will be Maxar’s first satellites in mid-inclination orbit (MIO), meaning they will orbit around Earth’s center rather than over its poles as the rest of Maxar’s constellation does, known as sun-synchronous orbit. This means dawn-to-dusk collection, more frequent monitoring, and better visibility in areas with morning fog — getting us closer to near real-time insights. The final two WorldView Legions will also be launched into MIO,” the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Notably, the realization of this new, ultra-modern constellation also comes as Maxar is moving in a strategic “new direction,” according to Hake, who recently joined the company after serving for years as an executive at Palantir.

“Maxar has been collecting high resolution imagery for many years — we have actually the largest commercial library of imagery — it’s more than 125 petabytes of data. And we collect almost 3.8 million square kilometers of imagery every day,” Hake told DefenseScoop during an interview in May. 

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Once the WorldView Legion fleet of six spacecraft is all set, Maxar will be poised to collect imagery from a coverage area of more than 6 million square kilometers per day.

“But when you ask about the new direction — where Maxar is going — it’s taking all the imagery we’re collecting and also helping to build more [software and analytics] products and solutions out of it,” Hake explained, pointing to the company’s expanding 3D mapping and simulation-enabling capabilities.

“I think the future direction of the company is more about knowing that just providing imagery is honestly not enough for our users, right? They need to have insights and information surfaced out of that imagery, so they can actually make decisions faster,” she told DefenseScoop.

Brandi Vincent

Written by Brandi Vincent

Brandi Vincent is DefenseScoop's Pentagon correspondent. She reports on emerging and disruptive technologies, and associated policies, impacting the Defense Department and its personnel. Prior to joining Scoop News Group, Brandi produced a long-form documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. She was named a 2021 Paul Miller Washington Fellow by the National Press Foundation and was awarded SIIA’s 2020 Jesse H. Neal Award for Best News Coverage. Brandi grew up in Louisiana and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.

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