LONGMONT, CO, Oct. 8, 2009 (Marketwire) --

LONGMONT, CO -- (Marketwire) -- 10/08/09 -- DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI), a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution world-imagery products and services for defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial customers, today announced the successful launch and deployment of WorldView-2, the company's latest high-resolution, remote-sensing satellite. The satellite launched on a Boeing Delta II 7920 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The DigitalGlobe ground station received a downlink signal confirming that the satellite successfully separated from its launch vehicle and automatically initialized its onboard processors. WorldView-2 is currently undergoing a calibration and check-out period. DigitalGlobe expects imagery products and services from WorldView-2 to be commercially available in approximately 90 days.

"The successful launch of WorldView-2 is an important milestone for the industry and for DigitalGlobe," said Jill Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of DigitalGlobe. "Once commissioned, WorldView-2 will effectively double DigitalGlobe's collection capacity, enabling us to provide at least annually updated coverage of the world as well as intra-day revisit for more rapid and reliable collection for our customers. Additionally, WorldView-2's eight spectral bands will significantly enhance our ability to meet our customers' needs for feature identification, change, detection, and other high-value services."

As the most recent of the next-generation WorldView-class satellites, WorldView-2 features advanced agility and accuracy, industry-leading capacity, and eight-band multispectral imagery. WorldView-2 will collect multispectral imagery at 1.8 meter resolution and panchromatic imagery at .46 meters.(1) The additional band capability supports improved levels of feature identification and extraction and more accurately reflects the world's natural color.

The satellite was built by Ball Aerospace (NYSE: BLL) and the imaging sensor was provided by ITT Corporation's (NYSE: ITT) Space Systems Division.

To learn more about advanced DigitalGlobe's constellation of sub-meter satellites, please visit www.digitalglobe.com.

About DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe (http://www.digitalglobe.com) is a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery products and services. Sourced from our own advanced satellite constellation, our imagery solutions support a wide variety of uses within defense and intelligence, civil agencies, mapping and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, internet portals and navigation technology.