WorldView-3 is capable of:

• 31 cm panchromatic resolution
• 1.24 m multispectral resolution (8 bands)
• 3.7 m short-wave infrared resolution (8 bands)
• 30 m Clouds, Aerosols, Vapours, Ice, and Snow (CAVIS) resolution (12 bands)

Digital Globe received permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce to sell imagery to all of its customers at up to 25 cm panchromatic and 1.0 m multispectral ground sample distance (GSD) beginning six months after WorldView-3 was operational.

WorldView-3 covers a ground swath of 13.1 km, supporting multiple swath imaging for mosaic image creation and stereo imaging. The satellite can acquire five strips to create an image of an area of 66.5 km x 112 km in a single pass. For stereo imaging, two pairs of images, measuring 26.6 km x by 112 km, can be acquired in one pass. With its high agility, WorldView-3 delivers a revisit time of under one day for any given location on Earth with a 1 m ground resolution or better. Revisit times for an off-nadir angle of 20° or less is on the order of 4.5 days.

The WorldView-3 satellite sensor benefits from significant improvements on the previous WorldView-2 mission including cost savings, risk reduction, and faster delivery for its customers.

The image collection system is backed by a sorting algorithm that automates the filtering process and can also correct colours to mitigate lighting and atmospheric effects. The wide array of bands also allows DigitalGlobal to generate more and better data that government agencies can use to do societally productive tasks, such as monitoring the state of forests and farmlands, tracking the spread of wildfires and urban infrastructure planning. 

Satellite images from WorldView-3 were used in 2015 by an international team of archaeologists to discover what they believe to be a Viking settlement on Point Rosee, Newfoundland.