Last flight of the Titan

A companion to the world’s most powerful private Earth-imaging satellite rocketed into space today from the U.S. west coast atop an Atlas 5 to double the amount of high-resolution imagery available on the commercial market and satisfy the demands of customers clamoring for more.

SpaceX crews at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California rolled out a Falcon 9 rocket and lifted it vertical atop its launch pad ahead of a planned blastoff Wednesday with a Spanish radar observation satellite and two test probes for a planned global broadband Internet network.

Less than three months after rocketing into space, the commercial WorldView 4 Earth-imagery satellite has finished in-orbit testing and calibration to begin operations for DigitalGlobe.