To see something clearly, sometimes you need to change your perspective. Think out of the box. Turn the problem on its side. When you start to look at things differently, you sometimes start noticing things you couldn't see before.

A lot of times, the real challenge is figuring out just how to get that different perspective. It might be as simple as taking a walk and coming back to the problem when your mind is clear. But often, the best thing to do is to step back, look more broadly, and try to get a "big picture" view of the problem.

Satellites in orbit around the Earth do this all the time - they "step back" by hundreds of miles to provide a unique perspective on our planet. Today, a number of different commercial satellites are in operation around the Earth, each providing information used in applications as diverse as urban planning, mapping for natural resources, or evacuation planning and disaster response.

And that doesn't even count the really cool pictures you can call up on your computer in Google Maps - that really provides a different perspective on things.

Earlier this month, the latest of these commercial satellites - DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 - was successfully launched into Earth orbit. The capabilities of this satellite are pretty spectacular - from 770 km (about 500 miles) above the earth, it can capture images with a resolution of up to 50 cm (about 1.5 feet) over an area almost 1 million square km each day (which is a pretty big number, given that the entire surface of the earth is only around 150 million square km). Its orbit will also allow the satellite to revisit any location on the Earth's surface typically in just over 1 day, allowing for quick, high resolution updates of rapidly changing conditions on the surface.

As you might imagine, the entire process to design and launch a satellite is pretty complicated, involving sub-contractors who each specialize on different parts of the entire project. For the imaging system on WorldView-2 - the "eyes" of the entire satellite - DigitalGlobe worked with the Space Systems Division of ITT Corporation, who designed and built this key component. And when ITT needed custom CCD image sensors for this new imaging system, they came to Kodak.

This isn't the first time Kodak has worked with ITT to design and manufacture CCD image sensors for a commercial imaging satellite - we also worked with ITT on the sensors used in DigitalGlobe's WorldView-1 and QuickBird satellites, as well as the IKONOS and GeoEye-1 satellites. But the CCD image sensors used in WorldView-2 give this satellite a unique set of imaging capabilities.

"Normal" color image sensors (like the one used in your digital camera, or in your phone) typically capture images in three different color ranges - red, green, and blue - and then use software to combine them into a single full color image. (Actually, this is very similar to how cone cells work in the retina of the eye.) The CCD image sensors in WorldView-2, however are different - instead of using three colors, they actually capture images across eight different wavelength regions, extending from the visible out into the IR. This extra color information can then be used to more accurately analyze vegetation on the ground, or generate more accurate "true-color" images from the satellite. In fact, this capability makes WorldView-2 unique, as it is the only commercial satellite that provides high resolution images across 8 different wavelength bands.

Less than two weeks after its launch, the first images from WorldView-2 have already been published by DigitalGlobe, as the satellite works through a 90-day initial calibration and check-out period. (If you're interested, you can even watch a replay of the satellite's launch.) After that, WorldView-2 should be fully on-line, providing new views of our planet from its orbit 500 miles above the Earth.

Not a bad place to gain some perspective.

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