The 188-foot (60-meter) tall booster, built and flown by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, lifted off at 11:30 a.m. (1830 GMT) and headed south over the Pacific Ocean.
About 20 minutes later, the rocket's upper-stage deposited the 6,200-pound (2,800-kg) WorldView-3 satellite into a 380-mile (600-km) polar orbit. At that altitude, WorldView-3 is capable of seeing individual trees in a forest and identifying cars by their windshields.
"Imagine that you were in San Francisco. With the capabilities of this satellite, we could see home plate in Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. We can see the players in the field ... We could even count empty seats," DigitalGlobe Vice President Neil Anderson said in an interview during a live launch webcast.
Longmont, Colorado-based DigitalGlobe has been selling images of Earth and data to government agencies, commercial companies, agricultural groups and research organizations since 2000. WorldView-3 will become the sixth member of the company's orbital network.
By Ruchi Singh
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
