spacetoday.net: GeoEye selects Lockheed for next satellite

Posted: Fri, Mar 12, 2010, 7:30 AM ET (1230 GMT)
GeoEye-2 illustration (Lockheed Martin)

Commercial remote sensing company GeoEye announced Thursday that it has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to build its next imaging satellite in the hopes of securing additional business from the US government. The GeoEye-2 satellite will be similar in imaging capability to the existing GeoEye-1, which can take images with resolutions as sharp as 41 centimeters, but will feature enhancements to allow it to collect more imagery at faster rates. Advance work on the camera system for the satellite, provided by ITT, started back in 2007. GeoEye plans to launch the new satellite in late 2012. Lockheed Martin built the Ikonos satellite for GeoEye predecessor company Space Imaging, while General Dynamics's satellite unit, sold last week to Orbital Sciences Corporation, built GeoEye-1. Terms of the deal were not disclosed; the contract was announced a day after GeoEye secured a financing deal with Cerebus Capital Management for the satellite, part of GeoEye's effort to secure an EnhancedView contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.