WorldView Legion
WorldView Legion is the next generation of Maxar Intelligence’s industry-leading Earth observation constellation. WorldView Legion is a fleet of high-performance satellites that triples Maxar’s capacity to collect 30-cm class imagery, with more than 6 million sq km collected per day when combined with the entire Maxar constellation. With a mix of sun-synchronous and mid-inclination orbits, WorldView Legion dramatically expands Maxar’s ability to revisit high-interest areas to better inform critical, time-sensitive decisions.
WorldView Legion is a constellation of six, 34-centimeter (cm) high-resolution Earth observation satellites owned and operated by Maxar Technologies. The first two Legion satellites successfully launched on May 2, 2024 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. On August 15, 2024, Legion 3 and Legion 4 launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The remaining two satellites are planned to launch in the near future.
WorldView Legion satellites offer 34-cm resolution panchromatic imagery, making them among the highest resolution commercial satellites available. They also capture multispectral imagery at 1.36-meter (m) resolution with eight bands: coastal, blue, green, yellow, red, red edge 1, red edge 2, and near-infrared (NIR). This spectral diversity enables enhanced analysis capabilities for a wide variety of applications including vegetation analysis and monitoring, mineral and hydrocarbon exploration, forestry studies, and land use-land cover classifications, cartography and navigation.
Once fully deployed, the WorldView Legion constellation will be positioned in various orbits to provide frequent revisits, with up to 15 revisits per day in some areas. Legion 1 and Legion 2 are currently in sun-synchronous orbits; and were joined by Legion 3 and Legion 4 orbiting at the Earth’s mid-latitudes (Legion 5 and Legion 6 will also be in mid-latitude orbits). At a 45-degree inclination, mid-latitude orbit, Legion 3 and Legion 4 have greater daytime coverage and more revisits in high-interest areas. With 90% of the world’s population living between 45° North and 45° South latitudes, the WorldView Legion constellation has shorter revisit times to these regions, while still covering the far northern and southern latitudes with two sun-synchronous satellites.
The WorldView Legion constellation allows Apollo Mapping to offer increased imaging capacity and faster delivery times to its customers across various sectors, including defense, mining, oil and gas, engineering, education and research, and humanitarian relief.
