The Delta 2 rocket lifts off Thursday from Vandenberg's SLC-2W pad. Photo: Thom Baur/Boeing

Its name is QuickBird and it will take pictures of Earth's surface with unprecedented clarity for a commercial eye-in-the-sky imaging satellite.

The spacecraft was successfully launched into orbit Thursday by the workhorse Boeing Delta 2 rocket.

Liftoff occurred on time at precisely 1851:26 GMT (2:51:26 p.m. EDT; 11:51:26 a.m. PDT) on the date first penciled in back in early spring when DigitalGlobe, formerly EarthWatch, of Longmont, Colorado selected the highly reliable Delta to loft QuickBird.

As the countdown reached the final two seconds, the trademark belch of fire erupted from the base of the rocket as the liquid-fueled first stage main engine powered to life. As clocks struck zero, the three solid-propellant motors strapped to the vehicle were ignited and the 61-minute flight was under way.

The Delta darted off its oceanside launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base along California's Central Coast, about 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and quickly punched through a deck of low clouds.

Less than 11 minutes later the rocket's second stage and attached QuickBird payload arrived in a parking orbit where the duo coasted for 44 minutes. The second stage engine then was reignited for a quick 11-second burst to circularize the orbit.

The three spent solid rocket motors are jettisoned from the Delta 2 rocket less than two minutes after launch. Photo: Spaceflight Now/Boeing TV

QuickBird was deployed from the rocket to fly on its own about 60 minutes and 30 seconds after blastoff, marking the 44th straight successful launch of the Delta 2 dating back to 1997. Since Deltas began flying in 1960, this was the 272nd successful launch in 288 tries.

"Our customers worldwide have been anticipating this launch for quite some time and we are very pleased to announce a successful deployment of the world's highest resolution commercial imaging satellite, QuickBird," Herb Satterlee, president and CEO of DigitalGlobe, said in a post-launch statement.

When QuickBird becomes operational in early February, it will provide high-resolution black and white images of the planet showing detail as small as two feet (61 centimeters) across for selling on the commercial market.

That sharp focus is one-foot better than that currently offered by the rival Space Imaging's Ikonos satellite, giving what DigitalGlobe says is an advantage in the Earth-imaging business.

"It makes a huge difference to customers. It has had a much bigger impact than I ever expected. We've had every single customer without expectation come to us and say 'we are so excited about this,'" Satterlee told Spaceflight Now in an interview this week.

"We are clearly in a strong competitive advantage position over Ikonos at least for the next three or four years."

Satterlee believes it will be 2004 or 2005 before a satellite could be built and launched to match or exceed QuickBird's capabilities.

Built by Ball Aerospace, the 2,267-pound QuickBird spacecraft was originally designed to provide three-foot (one-meter) resolution from an orbit 373 miles (600 km) above the planet. But DigitalGlobe decided earlier this year to lower the target altitude to 280 miles (450 km) to improve the resolution.

The QuickBird spacecraft sits atop the Delta 2 rocket during the final days of pre-flight preparations. This view was taken before the second half of the rocket's nose cone was installed. Photo: DigitalGlobe

QuickBird's color imagery was improved from 13.2-foot to 8.05-foot resolution (4-meter to 2.44-meter) with the orbit change.

Users of QuickBird's image data will range from map makers, agricultural developers, urban planners, governments around the globe, scientists monitoring the environment and even private citizens wanting a photo of someplace special taken from space.

"QuickBird provides the commercial markets of the world easy and inexpensive access to the most refined representation of our planet ever assembled," Satterlee said. "We believe that the quality and resolution of our imagery and our commitment to our customers will demonstrate that DigitalGlobe is Clearly the Best."

Satterlee said in our pre-launch interview Tuesday that it was too soon to know whether DigitalGlobe would be awarded any sort of U.S. government contract buying up all the pictures of Afghanistan.

Earlier this week it was announced that all Ikonos imagery of Afghanistan would be sold exclusively to the U.S. government, thus effectively blocking terrorists or anyone else from purchasing pictures of the region in this time of war.

"Because we haven't launched yet, we really haven't gotten in discussions with them yet and certainly have not discussed shutter control other than the normal processes that we have had discussions with over the past three years," Satterlee said.

Artist's concept of QuickBird. Photo: DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe, which lost its first two satellites over the past four years because of a spacecraft power system malfunction in orbit and a launch failure, respectively, hopes to build a duplicate of QuickBird for launch in late 2004 or early 2005. Beyond that, the company isn't sure whether its next-generation spacecraft will offer even higher resolution or more of the same.

"Over the next year I think we will get some pretty good input from the marketplace on where the demand is and then we will look at strategically where we should go with our future systems," Satterlee said.

For Boeing, the Delta 2 team has one more launch scheduled this year -- the December 7 flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying NASA's TIMED atmospheric research satellite and the French/U.S. Jason-1 oceanography craft.