In 1993, the US Department of Commerce granted Maxar's predecessor, WorldView Imaging Corporation (WorldView), the first US licence allowing a private enterprise to build and operate a satellite system to gather high spatial resolution digital imagery of Earth for commercial sale. This enabled WorldView to design its first spacecraft, EarlyBird, to collect 3 m resolution panchromatic and 15 m multispectral imagery.

EarthWatch was formed in 1995 by Ball Aerospace and WorldView along with its major partners from the United States, Italy amd Japan. During the period 1996 and 1997, EarthWatch developed its order processing and manufacturing systems, ground infrastructure, and constructed the EarlyBird satellite, the highest resolution commercial satellite at the time. Although EarlyBird was launched successfully, the satellite failed on orbit four days later due to a problem with the onboard power system. 

After the failure of EarlyBird, a new-generation satellite, QuickBird-1, was developed by Ball Aerospace (funding by Maxar) with the objective to provide commercial imagery at 1 m (PAN) and at 4 m (MS) resolution. The QuickBird-1 spacecraft and instrument design is practically identical with the design of QuickBird-2. From a technical point of view, the high-resolution imaging capability of QuickBird-1 required a change in instrument technology from a staring-array design (of EarlyBird) to a pushbroom/large-telescope technique, resulting in a new spacecraft design.

A launch of QuickBird-1 took place on 20 November 2000. Unfortunately QuickBird-1 failed to reach orbit. No contact could be established with the spacecraft ending in a loss of the mission.

QuickBird-2 was subsequently built and then launched to largely the same specification.

Using its BGIS 2000 sensor, the QuickBird-2 satellite collected image data to a 0.65m pixel resolution degree of detail.

Along with the Pan (450-900 nm, stretching from blue to the near infrared) QuickBird-2 provided four typical multispectral bands in the visible to near-infrared range: blue (450-520 nm), green (520-600 nm), red (630-690 nm) and near infrared (760-900 nm)

QuickBird-2 used the BCP 2000 (Ball Commercial Platform 2000) satellite bus design of BATC (Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation). The spacecraft was three-axis stabilised. The ADCS (Attitude Determination and Control subsystem) used two star trackers, redundant IRUs (Inertial Reference Units), sun sensors and magnetometers for attitude sensing. Attitude control was provided by low-vibration reaction wheels, three torque rods, and four hydrazine thrusters. 

At first, the spacecraft was in a Sun-synchronous orbit with an operating altitude of 450 km. It completed one revolution every 93 minutes.

Maxar opted initially for a fairly low orbital altitude of 450 km to obtain a higher ground spatial resolution of the imagery. This was at the expense of swath width. The low orbit required more orbit raising manoeuvres due to the increased drag influence of the atmosphere. 

In mid-April 2011, Maxar raised the orbit of QuickBird-2 to an altitude of 482 km. The new altitude gave the spacecraft an extended life until 2015.

Learn more about QuickBird-2 from these websites:

• QuickBird-2 on the EUSI Website*
• QuickBird-2 on the eoPortal*

*The information provided is sourced and updated by external entities. For further details, please consult our Terms and Conditions page.