BlackSky has announced that their fifth and sixth global satellites have completed commissioning and are now in commercial operations.
The addition of these two satellites to the BlackSky constellation brings higher resolution and increased revisits for key customer markets around the world.
These latest two satellites launched in August of 2020 and successfully achieved their first image captures within 58 hours of operation. The satellites have been delivering customer collections since that time while concurrently completing the commissioning process.
BlackSky’s fifth and sixth satellites are already delivering enhanced image performance and growing revisits for BlackSky customers. By flying at lower altitudes than other satellites in BlackSky’s constellation, these latest two satellites can produce images with resolution up to 80 cm —a 20 percent improvement over the existing satellites in the constellation.
The position of these satellites at an inclination of 53 degrees will allow additional revisits across all markets with heightened performance in Europe and Asia. These advances will unlock more analytic and data driven opportunities for BlackSky’s customers.
The BlackSky constellation now includes six satellites. The company is on track to add 10 more satellites to its constellation by the end of 2021.
Executive Comment
“The addition of our fifth and sixth satellites into our commercial constellation is an important step in our strategy to provide our customers with data that materially impacts their mission and business objectives,” said Brian O’Toole, CEO of BlackSky. “We’ve always prioritized speed and utility so our customers experience incredible first-to-know insights. This campaign continues to execute on that commitment by delivering intelligence that can change outcomes.”