Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What can you say about your next-generation system – especially the launch?

A. The Company successfully launched GeoEye-1 on September 6, 2008. The satellite was launched aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) (http://www.ulalaunch.com) Delta II launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Launch took place at exactly 11:50:57 a.m. (Pacific Time) to get the best orbit for imaging. The launch window was open for only 84 seconds. GeoEye-1 - financed in part by a $500-million NextView contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) – has the highest resolution of any commercial imaging system - 0.41-meters or 16 inches. It collects color or multispectral imagery at 1.65-meter resolution or about 64 inches.

GeoEye-1 was lifted into a near-polar (sun-synchronous) orbit by a Delta II launch vehicle procured by Boeing Launch Services (http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bls/index.html) (Huntington Beach, Calif.) from United Launch Alliance (Denver, Colo.) This launch vehicle is the most reliable launch vehicle in its class with GeoEye-1 being its 83rd consecutive successful launch.

Q. When will you release any imagery?

A. The satellite is currently undergoing an engineering, calibration and system checkout. On Sept 17, 2008, Bill Schuster, GeoEye chief operating officer, said in a press release, "The checkout of our GeoEye-1 satellite continues to go as expected. We and General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, who built the satellite, are pleased with the performance and checkout progress of GeoEye-1. We expect to fully test the camera and produce imagery in the near future."

Q. What is the NextView program?

A. The U.S. Government, through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), announced in March 2003 that it intended to support the continued development of the commercial satellite imagery industry by sharing the costs for the engineering, construction and launch of the next generation of commercial imagery satellites. ORBIMAGE (now GeoEye, Inc.) won the second of two $500-million NextView contracts on September 30, 2004. A contract to build the satellite was awarded to General Dynamics in late 2004. GeoEye-1 was launched within four years of contract award with no cost overruns or change orders that often drive up the cost of such programs.

Q. What happened to the satellite once it arrived at Vandenberg AFB before launch?

A. On July 10, GeoEye announced it had successfully transported the satellite to Vandenberg Air Force Base. GeoEye-1 was encapsulated in a big temperature-controlled truck with two drivers and several chase cars. It took 12.5 hours to make the trip from the factory near Phoenix to Vandenberg AFB, which is a few hours’ drive north of Los Angeles. Once it arrived at the base it was placed in another clean room called a Payload Processing Facility. Here we did re-testing to make sure nothing was damaged in transit. Then we fueled the satellite. We needed hydrazine fuel in the satellite in order for it to keep the proper orbit since the Earth’s gravity will slowly pull it down over time. It’s fuel for station keeping. Boeing began stacking the first stage of the rocket on July 3 and on Friday, July 11 it began stacking the second stage of the rocket. Once the rocket was stacked, we will put the satellite in a can-like moving container and transported it the few miles to the launch pad. It was Space Launch Complex 2 West just a hundred yards or so from the Pacific Ocean. Then GeoEye-1 was lifted onto the Mobile Service Tower surrounding the rocket. After it checked out again, GeoEye-1 was bolted to the rocket and then readied for the September 6 launch.

Q. How much did the satellite cost?

A. The total project cost (including the satellite and its camera, financing, launch, launch insurance and the four owned or leased ground stations) to bring the GeoEye-1 satellite into service was approximately $502 million. We are not providing the specific cost of the satellite itself.

Q. Is GeoEye-1 insured?

A. On September 26, 2007, we announced that the Company secured approximately $270 million of launch and first-year on-orbit insurance for GeoEye-1. There is a policy for $220 million for launch and the first year of on-orbit operations and a second policy of $50 million for launch plus three years of operations. Total premiums for these policies are about $41 million. This insurance was obtained at a premium rate that was less than previously anticipated. Willis Inspace acted as the broker. In August 2008, we purchased an additional $50 million of total loss only insurance. GeoEye is therefore insured for a total of $320 million.

Q. Are there restrictions on your GeoEye-1 license?

A. While GeoEye-1 can collect imagery at 0.41-meter ground resolutions, the Company’s operating license from the U.S. Government requires re-sampling the imagery to 0.5-meter for all customers not explicitly granted a waiver by the U.S. Government. Under current licensing constraints, only the U.S. Government would be allowed access to imagery at this highest resolution.

Q. What about the imagery 24-hour hold rule for space pictures better than IKONOS?

A. After a lengthy U.S. Government interagency review, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) notified commercial imagery providers that the 24-hour hold rule that was required for imagery at a resolution better than .82-meter is no longer in place. On June 29, 2007, GeoEye’s commercial remote sensing license was modified to reflect this change. This means that GeoEye-1 imagery can be sold as soon as possible after it has been captured.

Q. Who built the satellite?

A. General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (AIS) (www.gd-ais.com) Gilbert, Arizona was GeoEye’s prime contractor and integrator for the satellite bus and telescope, which is much larger than IKONOS. The IKONOS satellite weighs 1,600 pounds; GeoEye-1 tips the scales at more than 4,300 pounds. Despite its size, the satellite is very agile and able to collect imagery very quickly as it moves 423 miles (681 kilometers) above the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. GeoEye-1 was launched into a polar orbit on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

ITT Corporation’s Space Systems Division built the sensor and delivered it to General Dynamics for integration into the spacecraft in January 2007. ITT has a long heritage in building these systems for the U.S. Government, and GeoEye is capitalizing on that skill set. General Dynamics has had a "10 for 10" satellite success rate for deploying spacecraft. ITT has never had a failure of one of their sensors. No other single rocket design in the current era has strung together such a long and spotless track record. The Delta II has performed flawlessly since May 1997, amassing its 83 consecutive successful launch strings (including GeoEye-1) by accurately deploying spacecraft for military, NASA and commercial users, including the Global Positioning System satellites, the twin Mars rovers Spirit and opportunity, the Spitzer Space Telescope, COSMO-SkyMed(Italy), and the Mercury-bound MESSENGER orbiter. In the rocket's 138 flights overall since debuting in 1989, 136 of those launches have been successful.

Q. What are some unique characteristics of GeoEye-1?

A. Besides the unrivaled spatial resolution of 0.41-meters or about 16 inches, GeoEye-1 is designed to have three-meter accuracy, which means that customers can map natural and man-made features to within three meters of their actual locations on the surface of the Earth without ground control points. This level of accuracy is unsurpassed. At 0.41-meter resolution, GeoEye-1 can 'see' home plate on a baseball diamond and precisely locate it within three meters of its true location on the surface of the globe. As far as imagery collection, in the panchromatic mode the satellite can collect up to 700,000 square kilometers in a single day and in the multispectral mode 350,000 square kilometers per day. Spatial resolution, geolocation accuracy and large-area coverage are the three specifications that commercial and government customers desire most.

Q. What are your plans for selling imagery from GeoEye-1?

A. GeoEye will be ready to start full commercial operations for GeoEye-1 products a few months after launch. Right now, GeoEye-1 is in an engineering and calibration period. The company expects to start commercial operations for GeoEye-1 in the fall.

Q. How do I place an order for GeoEye-1 imagery?

A. There are several ways for commercial customers to purchase GeoEye-1 imagery.

Our Service Experts are available to answer any specific questions you may have regarding the purchase of our imagery products.

Please contact a Service Expert by phone Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. EST (-4 GMT).

Phone: 1.800.232.9037 (Within the United States)
          +1 703.480.5670 (International)
Email: info@geoeye.com

You may also contact an authorized GeoEye Channel Partner. The GeoEye family of partners consists of businesses and organizations with a long history of expertise in the geospatial world, an unsurpassed knowledge base in remote sensing, and extensive domain experience in a variety of disciplines. Click here for contact details.

Q. Where are your GeoEye-1 ground stations?

A. GeoEye has upgraded a centralized command and control ground station facility at its headquarters in Dulles, Virginia. This operations center will send tasking and operating commands to the satellite and receive data downlinks from it. Three other stations will be operated or leased by GeoEye in Alaska, Norway and Antarctica. Having a total of four ground stations will provide the primary data reception needed due to the large volume of imagery that will be captured by the satellite. We have also upgraded our facility in Thornton, Colorado (just North of Denver) to be a back-up ground station for GeoEye-1.

Q. How will imagery from GeoEye-1 be used?

A. The Company’s current and future GeoEye-1 products serve a wide array of applications for defense, national and homeland security, air and marine transportation, oil and gas, mining, mapping and location-based services, state and local government planning, insurance and risk management, agriculture, and environmental monitoring. Now that GeoEye-1 has successfully launched, our customers will have assured access to high-resolution, high-quality commercial imagery well into the 2015 timeframe.

Q. Won’t GeoEye-1 be so good that it will invade people’s privacy?

A. No. Imagery from high-resolution systems such as the GeoEye-1 satellite is considered to be outside the threshold of personal privacy. The GeoEye-1 satellite can 'see' objects on Earth as small as 0.41-meters or about 16 inches in size. At that resolution, it is impossible to recognize individual people. The Systems are primarily used for mapping.

Q. What will follow GeoEye-1? Will there be a GeoEye-2?

A. On October 18, 2007 we announced that the Company signed a contract with ITT to begin work on the camera for GeoEye-2. This was the first step in a phased development process for an advanced, third-generation satellite capable of discerning objects on the Earth’s surface as small as 0.25-meter (9.75 inch) in size. On June 10 the Company announced that the glass mirror blank has been delivered to ITT Corporation. Currently, GeoEye and ITT are working on the sensor electronics and other elements of the camera’s telescope, including the primary mirror. We have also procured additional long-lead focal plane electronic components from ITT which will be integrated into the next higher level of assembly for the sensor system. The Company also expects to contract with a satellite builder later in the near future launch the satellite approximately three years after work begins under that contract. This contract shows that GeoEye will continue to maintain a constellation of Earth-imaging sensors that will provide our customers with assured access to imagery well into the next-decade.

Because of strong market trends, we believe that the market will be ready for another sensor in the 2011 timeframe. We are also moving ahead with plans for GeoEye-2 independent of any formal U.S. Government commitment as an anchor customer.

GeoEye-2 will be of the same general class as GeoEye-1, but will benefit from significant improvements in capability, including enhanced direct tasking. While GeoEye has an operating license from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to build and launch a satellite constellation with this extremely high ground resolution, the final decision regarding GeoEye-2’s resolution will be made in response to how best to serve customer requirements, as well as consideration of the current regulatory environment. Under current licensing constraints, only the U.S. Government would be allowed access to imagery at this highest resolution.


We chose ITT as our digital camera supplier for GeoEye-2 because of their superior digital imaging products and excellent track record with delivery of both the GeoEye-1 and IKONOS sensors. GeoEye’s Board of Directors gave the approval for development of GeoEye-2 at a Board meeting on September 27, 2007.

FAQ

› What can you say about your next-generation system?
› When will you release any imagery?
› What is the NextView program?
› What happened to the satellite once it arrived at Vandenberg AFB before launch?
› How much did the satellite cost?

› more FAQs
Fact Sheet

Learn more about GeoEye-1's imaging, collection and advanced technical specifications.

› view fact sheet
GeoEye-1 Launched Sept. 6

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