【Dear Utol: Week 1 Highlights Episode 7】

A brand new satellite orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth's surface has just opened its eyes.

DigitalGlobe released the first public photo taken by the company's Earth-gazing WorldView-4 satellite,Dear Utol: Week 1 Highlights Episode 7 and it's a beauty.

The new image, taken on Nov. 26 and unveiled last week, shows Tokyo, Japan's Yoyogi National Gymnasium, one of the sites of the 1964 Olympics.

SEE ALSO: The first photo of Earth from space was taken 70 years ago

WorldView-4 is the latest advanced satellite in a fleet of five DigitalGlobe spacecraft designed to beam high-resolution images of various places on Earth back to people on the ground.

The details in the new photo are impressive, especially considering that the image was taken from 617 kilometers, or about 383 miles, above the planet. Cars and trucks can be seen on roads and in parking lots, and stretching shadows of soccer players fan out on pitches on the upper-left portion of the photo.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The difference between WorldView-4's first photo and some of the early images taken by DigitalGlobe's Ikonos satellite, which launched in 1999 and took its last photo in 2014, are like night and day.

Black and white Ikonos images clearly show large-scale features of different areas, but the detail is lost, limiting the number of applications available to users of the data.

Left:Ikonos Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Right:WorldView Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

All in all, WorldView-4 will provide 680,000 square kilometers (a bit less than the size of Texas) of imagery to DigitalGlobe's database every day.

Clients like Google use those images to create maps, provide help to aid organizations after disasters, and other applications.

DigitalGlobe isn't the only commercial company in the Earth imagery game. In fact, this is a rapidly expanding area, though DigitalGlobe stands out for its sizable government business with secretive organizations like the National Reconnaissance Office.

Start-ups like Orbital Insight, Planet and Spire want to use small satellites and big data to analyze images quickly to track issues like deforestation and even track aircraft and provide insight about the weather.

---

Featured Video For You

---

Watch Hawaii become a winter wonderland

---

Topics Google

• Tech
• Shopping
• Games
• Social Good
• Deals
• Science
• Life
• Digital Culture

• Camera lenses literally melted during the solar eclipse
• Alan Bennett on ‘Smut’ by Jonathan Gharraie
• Sir Ian McKellen recorded a very sweet video for Sir Patrick Stewart's 80th birthday
• Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “Or,” by Robyn Creswell
• Nintendo Switch 2 release date, price announced
• The Land Ark of Los Angeles by Lizzie Wade
• James Shea’s “Haiku” by Sarah Braunstein
• Josh Melnick and Walter Murch in Conversation by Josh Melnick
• Trump delays TikTok ban for another 75 days
• The surprising reason Lily Allen's 'Smile' went viral on TikTok

• Redux: A Smile Like Collapsed Piano Keys by The Paris Review
• Trains by Jill Talbot
• Redux: The Seasons Roll Over by The Paris Review
• Objects of Despair: Fake Meat by Meghan O’Gieblyn
• Entering Infinity with Yayoi Kusama by The Paris Review
• One Word: Salty by Myriam Gurba
• The Silence of Witches by Sabrina Orah Mark
• Tove Jansson on Writer’s Block by Tove Jansson
• Reimagining Masculinity by Ocean Vuong
• The False Innocence of Black Pete by Philip Huff

• The Made in America iPhone: How much would it cost?
• Apple Weather app down for some users again. What we know
• 6 things the White House is doing to rein in AI
• Eurovision 2023: All 37 songs hitting the finals
• Seven Steam games whose reviews have changed a lot
• Satanic Seduction; Dufus Casanovas by Lorin Stein
• Staff Picks: Modernist Journals, France Gall by The Paris Review
• Spotify takes down thousands of songs generated by AI startup Boomy
• Best robot vacuum deal: Eufy Omni C20 robot vacuum and mop $300 off at Amazon
• Volvo EX30 is the company's smallest electric SUV

• Camera lenses literally melted during the solar eclipse
• ICE drops policy banning international students from online study
• Only One Day to Go! by The Paris Review
• Apple Weather app down for some users again. What we know
• Shop the Shark FlexStyle for 20% off at Amazon
• Design for Living by Elaine Blair
• The Escape Artist by Chris Wallace
• 'Quordle' today: See each 'Quordle' answer and hints for May 7
• EV sales up 30 percent this year despite Tesla woes
• On the Shelf by Sadie Stein