NEOM is an arcology and planned city under construction by Saudi Arabia in their Tabuk Province. Launched in 2017 by crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, the site is at the northern tip of the Red Sea, due east of Egypt, across the Gulf of Aqaba and south of Jordan. The total planned area of Neom is 10,200 square miles. Multiple regions are planned, including a floating industrial complex, global trade hub, tourist resorts, and a linear city powered by renewable energy sources. Saudi Arabia claimed that NEOM would create around 460,000 jobs and add an estimated $48 billion to the country’s GDP. Thousands of people have been forcibly moved to make way for the project and villages have been razed. Most of the city is planned to be completed by 2039, though some experts have expressed skepticism about the ambitions of the megaproject. The project’s estimated costs exceed $8.8 trillion (more than 25 times the annual Saudi budget). Saudi Arabia originally aimed to complete major parts of the project by 2020, with an expansion completed in 2025, but fell behind schedule. The name NEOM is derived from two words. The first three letters come from the Ancient Greek prefix neo – meaning ‘new’. The ‘M’ is the first from ‘Mustaqbal’, an Arabic word meaning ‘future’. The M is also the first letter of the Crown Prince’s name, Mohammed bin Salman. In the 30-cm WorldView Legion images featured here, we can see the NOEM campus where all of the workers are housed; and in the other photo, we can see the construction of The Line building. The WorldView Legion images featured here were collected on January 29, 2025, and have custom processing and color balance applied by Apollo Mapping. (Satellite Imagery © 2025 Maxar Technologies)In this monthly article, we travel the world to check out unique, fun and sometimes a bit weird 30-centimeter (cm) color imagery samples from the WorldView constellation. In June, we checked two images over agricultural fields northeast of Gaborone, Botswana. For this edition of the 30-cm Color WorldView Image of the Month, we feature two images from high-above the Neom campus in Saudi Arabia.
30-cm WorldView-3 (WV3) launched in late 2014, WorldView-4 (WV4) launched in late 2016 and then the first WorldView Legion satellites launched in 2024. Taken together, this is the most advanced satellite constellation the commercial marketplace has ever had access to. Here are a few of the features that really set these satellites apart from the competition:
- Improved Resolution
- Higher resolution means you can see more detail in WorldView imagery.
- Data collected at nadir will have 31-centimeter (cm) panchromatic, 1.24-meter (m) visible and near infrared, 3.7-m SWIR (WV3 only) and 30-m CAVIS (WV3 only) bands.
- Additional Spectral Bands
- If spectral analysis is part of your project, then no other satellite can match WorldView-3 and WorldView Legion with their 8 bands of visible and near-infrared data; and then 8 shortwave infrared bands (WV3 only) which are crucial for geological studies.
- Better Positional Accuracy
- With accuracies of 3.5-m CE90% or better (without ground control even!), the 30-cm WorldView constellation has no rivals for its enhanced positional accuracy.
- Daily Revisits
- With multiple WorldView-3 and WorldView Legion satellites orbiting our planet, daily revisits are available for most locations.
- WV4 is no longer collecting new imagery.
- Increased Collection Capacity
- WV3/4 feature 13.1-km swath widths (at nadir) with the ability to collect up to 680,000 square kilometers (sq km) of high-resolution data per day per satellite (though WV4 is dead now).
- When fully launched, WorldView Legion will feature six 30-cm satellites, significantly boosting the collection capacity of this leading high-resolution constellation.
If you are interested in WorldView-3, WorldView-4 and/or WorldView Legion imagery for your next project, please let us know by phone, 303-993-3863, or by email, sales@apollomapping.com.
You can also find more WV3 samples and technical information on our website here; WV4 samples and information can be found here; and then finally here is more information about WorldView Legion.
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