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“Multi-million” euro agreement covers engineering and flight model phases of a next-generation optical payload for Earth observation.

The French infrared detector specialist Sofradir will supply the high-resolution focal plane arrays used in a new constellation of Earth observation military satellites being built by a European consortium.

The “multinational space-based system” (MUSIS) comprises a partnership between France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Italy and Poland, and is designed to replace the existing Helios II satellites with visible and IR imaging technology at a higher resolution.

France is providing the optical space component (CSO) visible and IR imaging elements of MUSIS, while Germany and Italy are working on a pair of radar imagers, and Spain is to provide a broadband imager called “Ingenio”.

France Astrium is the prime contractor for the CSO satellite development contract, having been awarded that deal by the French space agency CNES last year. Sofradir describes the detector contract as being worth “multi-million” euros and says that it will deliver the high-end mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) components to Thales Alenia Space France, which is building the optical systems used in the satellites, by 2015. As the only high-volume MCT manufacturer outside the US, Sofradir has already been working on the development since 2005.

State of the art

“After our successful involvement in the satellites Helios IIA and IIB, launched in 2004 and 2009 respectively, Sofradir is proud to be part of the MUSIS/CSO project and have the continued confidence of the French MoD and TAS,” said Philippe Bensussan, chairman and CEO at Sofradir.

“Our expertise in developing state-of-the-art IR detectors for Earth observation applications will be further strengthened through this collaboration.”

The next-generation satellite system is designed to deliver enhanced intelligence by improving on the optical resolution and detector sensitivity within the existing Helios II satellites, and also disseminating the images captured by the satellites more quickly than is currently possible.

Handling the huge amounts of data created by high-resolution aerial and satellite imaging at a speed that can benefit forces on the ground was identified by Regina Dugan, director of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a major bottleneck earlier this year in a plenary talk at the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) conference.

“We are swimming in sensors; drowning in data,” said Dugan at the time, while indicating that much of the data is produced by optical sensors like visible-range surveillance cameras, and infrared and hyperspectral imaging technologies.

Germany, Belgium, Spain, France and Greece signed a letter of intent to create MUSIS in November 2008, while Italy joined the consortium in early 2009 and Poland signed up in late 2010.

In June this year, the Spanish wing of Thales Alenia Space said it had been awarded contracts worth a total of €7.5 million, covering the design, development, manufacturing, qualification, and supply of electronics for the focal plane of the optical instruments, and a service module for the two high-resolution CSO satellites for MUSIS.

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avionweek

11th October 2011


In this Issue
1. European Parliament Discusses EC Communication Addressing GMES
2. DG Enterprise & Industry Highlights the New Space Policy
3. Conference on European Union Space Policy
4. End of European Remote-Sensing Satellite Missions
5. Artic Sea Ice Reaches New Low Record
6. ESA Awards New GMES Contract
GMES Project Corner:
7. Activations of GMES Emergency Management Service
8. G-MOSAIC Second User Workshop
9. MyOcean Product Showcase
10. MACC Stratospheric Ozone Service

1. European Parliament Discusses EC Communication Addressing GMES

At its meeting of 30-31 August 2011, the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) had an exchange of views on the Commission Communication “Towards a space strategy for the European Union that benefits its citizens”. Rapporteur at the EP is Aldo Patriciello from the Group of the European People’s Party. One of the top priorities for the future EU space policy set out by this Communication is implementing, in close collaboration with Member States, the European Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme.

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2. DG Enterprise & Industry Highlights the New Space Policy

The Enterprise & Industry (European Commission’s Directorate General) magazine n°11 was released on 8 September 2011. An article in this issue highlights the new space policy that the European Commission is developing to ensure continued success to this strategically important sector, and the role which security-related research plays in protecting European citizens.

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3. Conference on European Union Space Policy

Under the theme “A space policy for society and citizens”, the 4th annual Conference on European Union Space Policy will take place in Brussels (Belgium) on 8 and 9 November 2011. Among other things, this event offers a perfect opportunity for policy-makers, business leaders, scientists and representatives of civil society to take stock of the current state of the two large-scale programmes in development, Galileo and GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), directly from those in charge of them.

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4. End of European Remote-Sensing Satellite Missions

The European Remote-Sensing (ERS) missions of the European Space Agency (ESA) ended on 5 September 2011, after 20 years of continuous high-quality data covering the oceans, land, ice and atmosphere. They paved the way for the development of many new Earth observation techniques. To reduce the risk of collision with other satellites or space debris, the average altitude of the ERS-2 observation satellite had already been lowered from 785km to about 573km before it was safely taken out of service. This summer, the satellite took one last image over the Antilles Islands in the Caribbean.

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5. Artic Sea Ice Reaches New Low Record

On 8 September 2011 the Arctic sea ice extent index reached a new historical low point, according to the calculations of a research team at the University of Bremen, which has been observing the sea ice at both poles for many years. Already in July the new record minimum had been expected because in this month the sea ice extent was minimum, compared with the same month in other years. While the Northeast Passage (also known as the Northern Sea Route) has been open to shipping traffic since mid-August, the Northwest Passage –so recently a hostile challenge– could soon become navigable as well.

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6. ESA Awards New GMES Contract

The European Space Agency (ESA) has recently signed a three-year contract with Astrium Services for the provision of satellite images to public institutions in Europe under the terms of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. This contract, initially worth 17 million euros, is being funded by the European Commission. ESA is developing and managing the space component for the GMES initiative.

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GMES Projects’ Corner

7. Activations of GMES Emergency Management Service

The GMES Emergency Management Service powered by SAFER (Services and Applications for Emergency Response), a project co-funded under the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission, reinforces the EU capacity to respond to emergency situations: it provides a reactive cartographic service to the registered users involved in the management of humanitarian crisis, natural disasters and man-made emergency situations with timely and high quality products derived from Space Observation. During the period covered by this issue (August-September 2011), the SAFER Service has been activated three times due to fires in Greece and Bulgaria, as well as flooding in Pakistan.

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8. G-MOSAIC Second User Workshop

The G-MOSAIC (GMES services for Management of Operations, Situation Awareness and Intelligence for regional Crises) Collaborative Project will provide the European Union with intelligence data that can be applied to early warning and crisis prevention as well as to crisis management and rapid interventions in hot spots around the world. It aims at identifying and developing products, methodologies and pilot services for the provision of geo-spatial information in support to EU external relations policies and at contributing to define and demonstrate the sustainability of GMES global security services. It began in January 2009. This article reports on the project’s Second User Workshop which took place this summer.

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9. MyOcean Product Showcase

Within the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security programme (GMES), the aim of MyOcean project is to provide a sustainable service for Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting validated and commissioned by users. Its information includes observations, analysis, reanalysis and forecasts describing the physical state of the ocean and its primary biogeochemical parameters. The project recently published its new product showcase.

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10. MACC Stratospheric Ozone Service

MACC (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate) is the project establishing the core global and regional atmospheric environmental services delivered as a component of Europe’s GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) initiative. It is funded under the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Union and began on 1 June 2009. To illustrate the evolution of ozone hole, MACC has recently put together an animation showing the amount of ozone day after day during the months of August and September from 2003 until 2011.

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Source GMES.Info

The winning service of the first GMES Masters Best Service Challenge performs real-time processing of satellite data making it instantly available for users and researchers who need to respond quickly in emergency situations. From 25 services, the audience chose SRRS – Satellite Rapid Response System as the most beneficial services for European citizens.

The Best Service Challenge was launched as one category of the first European Earth Monitoring Competition, the GMES Masters 2011, as an online audience award. 25 existing services have been uploaded to the GMES Master’s website from various service providers. All visitors of www.gmes-masters.com had the opportunity to register and vote for the service they regarded most beneficial for European citizens. A clear majority chose SRRS – Satellite Rapid Response System with a total of 559 public votes. The emergency service was submitted by Luca Mellano from the Italian company CHELYS.

SRRS was created to make satellite data in form of images or value-added products available as quickly as possible to be used in response to emergency situations. The system performs real-time processing of satellite data from ESA and NASA missions, making these data available only two minutes after acquisition. SRRS’ strength is instant availability: raw data are processed without waiting for them to become higher level products, meaning no reliance on processing times in reception centres, and thereby enabling instant access to images and data for users and researchers on any type of client such as mobiles, PCs or tablets.

About the GMES Masters:

From 2011 onwards the GMES Masters will reward on an annual basis the best projects and business ideas for a GMES commercial service, with the aim to support the development of GMES related entrepreneurship in Europe. Initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Bavarian Ministry of Economy, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), T-Systems, and supported by the EU, the GMES Masters 2011 has called for proposals between 1 July and 15 September 2011 in five categories. The overall winner of the competition – the GMES Master 2011 – will be selected among the winners of the Ideas Challenge, ESA App Challenge, DLR Environmental Challenge, and T-Systems Cloud Computing Challenge and receive a cash prize of 20,000 Euro.

The winners of the first European Earth Monitoring Competition will be awarded on 19 October and the results published on the competition website www.gmes-masters.com on 20 October 2011.

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According to Frost & Sullivan analyst Daniel Longfield: “The explosion in the collection of advanced imagery and other spatial data and its consumption by non-GIS experts necessitates solutions to make data-rich intelligence more conveniently available and actionable by the broader enterprise and in the field.” , extracted from Susan Smith, GISCafe.com Managing Editor.

In mid-September geospatial companies GeoEye and TerraGo entered into a partnership to increase the access of their content to their broad community of users.

GeoEye has developed an access platform called EyeQ that allows them to stream out imagery through web services and their web interface. One of the early customers for that technology was the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). “The service makes all the imagery we collect on behalf of the NGA available online to be used by commanders, warfighters, and any user from the federal government that needs for that content,” said Tony Frazier, GeoEye senior vice president of Marketing. “We noted that many users in the community need to be able to take that content on the go and also collaborate through lightweight mobile tools. TerraGo is really a market leader in that space. We licensed technology from TerraGo to enable users to download our imagery in a GeoPDF format.”

GeoEye references both the work to extend their GeoIQ access platform to enable users to take that imagery on the go with a GeoPDF while at the same time collaborating on value added use cases where they can push value added products out to that same format. They are going to demonstrate at GEOINT how the right imagery can find users rather than the users always having to go looking for it.

On the TerraGo side, about 1,000 production customers create GeoPDF mapbooks, maps and imagery but there are about at least 10,000 organizations around the world who consume GeoPDF, that’s evidenced by the TerraGo toolbar.

“The GeoPDF is generic, in the Adobe environment as well so that number could be low,” noted Richard Cobb, president and CEO for TerraGo. “If you look at that user population of consumers, the 10,000 organizations are largely in areas other than defense and intelligence which would be crisis management and response. Numerable vertical industries could leverage imagery with the Terrago platform.”

“The whole idea of portability and mobility of spatial data imagery is the hardest problem,” Cobb said. “It’s big and complex and cumbersome. It’s going to take some work to crack that code.” The average size of a single file of high resolution imagery – a single image strip – a unit measure of what GeoEye would collect on a pass — could be upwards of 8 Gb of storage and requirement, and so part of the value of being able to have this online is being able to pick what product you want rather than downloading the whole thing.

“That solved part of the problem which is to find content you really care about,” said Cobb. “Another challenge is it’s still big data. One of the benefits of GeoPDF is you can take large files and compress them down into a format where people who don’t have access to great communications infrastructure can get access to great quality content and take it on the go. We’ve seen some examples of products that would be more than 200 Mb in size get compressed to 100th of that using GeoPDF.”

Downloads of the US Geological Survey’s (USGS) quadrangle maps increased from an average of 4,000 per month to nearly 150,000 per month following the introduction of TerraGo’s GeoPDF technology and software, which at the time was in the form of Topo Quads, 11 ½ min quads. These were offered at the USGS store online as geotiffs. In the past two or three years the National Map Program of the USGS has been creating the U.S. Topo that currently has eight layers of data that includes hydro information, one meter NAIP imagery,topo maps for elevation, and newly added vegetation maps. They have quickly gone from zero to 127,000 US topo downloads of GeoPDF. This technology is fast replacing the previous Topo Quads.

Mobile users can now take robust imagery that has been recently gathered and apply it to situational awareness and navigation, and also use it as a basis for collaboration – to collect data that can then be shared using tools and technologies like TerraGo Mobile. “This addresses the challenges of limited bandwidth and the desire for people to collaborate more effectively in the field,” said Cobb. “We believe we’re going to be able to reach not only new users in our existing base but new industries and really expand the penetration of GeoEye imagery dramatically.”

GeoEye has a system in production using their EyeQ technology to power different installations. “The installation we’ve deployed for the U.S. government under the NAIP Program runs in the cloud, and any government user/employee can request access to that system to be able to access imagery on demand. One of our team members that focuses on the state and local government and has been doing quite a bit of work with disaster response,” said Frazier. “Several years ago you couldn’t collect, process and disseminate imagery in enough time to be of use for a first responder. During the recent hurricane Irene that hit the East Coast, one colleague said the customer went from a request to having imagery in their hands within three hours. Being able to collect that content and stream it out – once it’s in a format like GeoPDF— then you can easily distribute it to many people. It allows everyone to have a common operating picture to what’s occurred on the ground.”

With the acquisition of the analytics firm SPADAC, GeoEye can now take not only imagery but other forms of geospatial data, analyzing information and discovering patterns to predict where new events may occur.

“We have tremendous imagery collection assets and we can really capture with our resolution and accuracy a precise view,” said Frazier. “But the adoption is going to be driven by how quickly you can get it into people’s hands, and so investments in enabling technology are a big part of our strategy.”

As more people demand access on mobile devices, TerraGo is stepping up to the plate to offer TerraGo mobile collaboration software to both Android and iOS in the Q4 2011 and Q1 2012 respectively. In the past twelve months, they have released TerraGo on Microsoft Windows Mobile.

“We see definite demand in core markets from working in defense and intelligence who were not traditionally interested in commercial mobile technology,” Frazier pointed out. “That has changed in the last year fairly dramatically. In other markets we serve, the Android and iOS platforms are fairly dominant.”

GeoPDF is a platform for collaboration and the GeoPDF imagery itself is a container that can be merged with other data such as vector data. You can put live services inside of GeoPDF. Cobb said that with intelligent imagery in GeoEye’s EyeQ platform, a GeoPDF can have smart services embedded in it that can act when there is connectivity. With connectivity the services inside the GeoPDF can do “just about anything,” including update itself with local weather, with content from different sources, or newer content during a rapidly moving crisis for example. GeoPDF is a collaboration platform that can be used when you have no connectivity or limited bandwidth also.

Frazier said that three-quarters of GeoEye’s business today is focused on imagery, the balance is producing other types of value added products. “We built over 3,000 3D airport products,” Frazier said. “We look at the exterior imagery of an airport, and we’re able to extract features or vectors that allow us to build a map accurate representation of both the airport itself as well as surrounding elevation and obstructions that can be helped to facilitate safe flight navigation. That’s a value added product we can distribute using this mechanism.”

Articlle by Susan Smith, GISCafe.com Managing Editor
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The Industrial age has been succeeded by the Information age, which defined social, economic and political relations in a different way.

The three key global information technologies in the context of geospatial data shall include the Internet, satellite navigation and Earth imagery from space. Rampant growth of the number of Earth imageries from space, improvement of imagery quality as well as simplification and cost reduction of information use promote its large-scale implementation not only in the economic processes but also in the everyday human activities.

A wide range of issues concerning space imagery applications as well as issues and prospects of the Earth remote sensing industry development will be discussed by participants of the Fifth International Conference “Earth from Space — the Most Effective Solutions”, which will take place from November 29 to December 2, 2011 in the Vatutinki resort hotel located in the Moscow Region (www.conference.scanex.ru).

The following issues will be discussed during plenary and poster sessions, workshops, round table discussions, master-classes, exhibition, WEB & GIS mini-conference, and free consultations on legal aspects of ERS data applications:

— space imagery as a tool for efficient upgrade of the Russian economy;
— goals and objectives of the state policy in the satellite imagery sector;
— issues and prospects of satellite development in the XXI century;
— a private-public partnership in the industry: domestic and foreign experience;
— a single supplier of satellite imagery data to state bodies – pluses and minuses;
— the geospatial component for e-government system;
— the synergy of military and civil space imagery technologies;
— use of open satellite images and web-services for national defense;
— the restriction on application of super resolution satellite data – enforcement of national security or an obstacle to economic development?
— institutional and legal industry working environment;
— satellite data influence on economic development: investments in the ERS industry – issues and prospects;
—use of space imagery in large infrastructure and industry projects;
— interdepartmental cooperation and interaction of large companies in the area of satellite data application;
— operational services for emergency monitoring, management and response (fire, seasonal and flash floods, and offshore zones);
— development of navigation maps on the basis of space images;
— application of space data for achievement of nature protection objectives;
— integration of satellite data, GIS and WEB technologies;
— topical issues of applying satellite methods in the higher education system;
— technologies and tools of satellite imagery processing;
— specifics of satellite data applications in territorial management from a federal district to a municipality.

The “Earth from Space – the Most Effective Solutions” conference is held biennially. In 2009 it was attended by over 500 representatives of 270 organizations from 27 countries.

In parallel with the key events of the conference the exhibition will be held intended to demonstrate along with the latest developments in the area of Earth remote sensing the experience of satellite monitoring application in various economy branches as the basis of cost-effective operating systems.

Anybody interested can attend the conference! Please register on the website http://www.conference.scanex.ru/reg/en/registration.php before November 10.

=The conference is organized by: SCANEX Research and Development Center, “Earth from Space” Association, and Non-Profit Organization “Transparent World”
=The Platinum Sponsor: GeoEye Company. The Golden Sponsor: ImageSat Int. N.V.
=The Silver Sponsors: Astrium GEO, MDA, Hitachi Solutions, GIA «Innoter» companies.
=The Webcast Sponsor: “Racurs” Company

29.09.2011. The European Space Agency ESA and OHB System AG, an OHB company, have signed a rider to the contract for the development of the SmallGEO geostationary satellite platform today. The Extension signed has a value of ca. EUR 14 million.

The SmallGEO platform is being developed by a consortium lead by OHB System AG within the ESA ARTES-11 program and is to go into operation in 2013 for the first time with a communications payload to be known as “Hispasat AG1” for Spanish service provider Hispasat.

The purpose of the Extension to the development contract signed today, which is known as Sub-Element 3 (ARTES 11-3), is to prepare the SmallGEO platform for a broader target group in the market for commercial satellite services beyond the Hispasat AG1 mission. It includes measures to reduce the costs of the entire platform as well as production and process costs along with a product extension to optimize the platform for a large number of different communications services.

Upon signing the contract, Marco Fuchs, CEO of OHB System AG, stated: “Sub-Element 3 marks the logical continuation of the development work on-going under a contract with ESA as part of it’s ARTES 11 programme and is an important step towards the successful commercial exploitation of our SmallGEO platform.

Contact for media representatives:
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Phone: +49 421 – 2020-620
Fax: +49 421 – 2020-9898
e-mail: steffen.leuthold@ohb.de

Earth to Business is released monthly as an e-mail newsletter. Most of our SWM-Customers receive the newsletter via ERDAS direct mailing service.

This are the topics of the most recent edition:

ERDAS INSIGHTS: – Radar-Based Coherence Change Detection

PRODUCT NEWS: – Cloud Removal in ERDAS IMAGINE®11.0.3

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY: – ERDAS APOLLO Serves Mission Data from Saturn and Mars Exploration

FEATURED TECHNOLOGY REPORT: – Catalog LiDAR and View in ArcMap with ERDAS APOLLO

TRAINER TIP – Quick Tip: ERDAS IMAGINE

Other customers (or if you did not receive the direct mailing), please use the link we provide here for direkt download from ERDAS website.

Haiyang-2 successfully launched in August

China successfully launched a maritime satellite at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China at 6:57 a.m. Tuesday Beijing Time.

The orbiter, Haiyang-2, was boosted by a Long March-4B carrier rocket from the launch center in the city of Taiyuan in Shanxi Province.

The satellite is for the supervision and survey of the maritime environment, an important measure for prevention and reduction of maritime disasters.

Credits: Space Travel / XNA – Xinhua

New NSR Report Forecasts EO Market to Grow to $10.5 Billion Over Next Decade

CAMBRIDGE, MA — (Marketwire) — 10/06/11 — NSR’s Global Satellite-Based Earth Observation, 3rd Edition, released today, indicates that last year the global Earth Observation (EO) market grew by 9% and is set to grow to $10.5 billion by 2020.

“Despite uncertainty created by the current budget crisis and financial debt of many countries, and the fact that a privately-funded EO operator recently went bankrupt, EO satellite operators have been growing their revenues lately,” said Claude Rousseau, Senior Analyst for NSR and report author. “With 14 new satellites offering commercial data in the coming three years that are driven by higher resolution imagery demand, sub-meter imagery is set to become the primary source of revenues in the industry, more than doubling in the coming decade,” he added.

Commoditization of space technologies is also dropping the average price tag of a high-performance satellite to less than $100 million. With the lower price tag and the quicker turn around, private sector companies and countries with developing space programs find entering the EO market a more attractive proposal.

Major programs such as the NGA’s EnhancedView or the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) of the EU are large contributors to the market revenues, but may also be a target for cuts as their justification could be questioned within larger government spending reduction efforts.

Government policies will also play a role in the EO market. Regulations that limit high-resolution data distribution to third parties, policies to freely give away EO data from publicly-funded satellites and export controls of satellite technologies are all actively affecting the EO market.

Even if satellite imagery prices have fallen over the past decade, depending on the resolution and type of imagery and the region, data revenues have grown, and these should be even higher than Value-Added Services (VAS) for part of the next decade due to the NGA EnhancedView contract kicking into higher gear when new satellites are launched.

About the Report

Global Satellite-Based Earth Observation, 3rd Edition is a multi-client report now available from NSR. The report provides a complete and comprehensive analysis of demand trends for the EO market in all regions and forecasts operational satellites and new satellite manufacturing revenues, as well as EO data and VAS revenues for the government/military and commercial markets for the period 2010-2020.

About NSR

NSR is an international market research and consulting firm specializing in satellite and wireless technology and applications. NSR’s primary areas of expertise include emerging technology, IP applications, and broadcast services. With extensive expertise in all regions and a number of broadband sectors, NSR is a leading provider of in-depth market insight and analyses.

Copyright @ Marketwire
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(3 October 2011) DigitalGlobe, a leading global provider of high-resolution earth imagery solutions, and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. jointly announced today they successfully completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for DigitalGlobe’s next generation remote-sensing satellite, WorldView-3.

The successful CDR was completed in late August and keeps WorldView-3 on schedule for a planned launch in the middle of 2014. WorldView-3 will expand DigitalGlobe’s orbiting constellation to four remote-sensing satellites, all of which were manufactured by Ball Aerospace.

“As they have so many times in the past, Ball continues to impress us with their consistent professionalism and highly effective execution,” said Walter Scott, executive vice president and chief technical officer. “Having built WorldView-2, WorldView-1, and QuickBird, Ball has amassed an unmatched level of knowledge and experience. This ultimately results in lower risk and higher efficiency in the design and manufacture of WorldView-3, keeping us consistently on-plan and on-schedule for a mid-2014 launch.”

The CDR verified design modifications between WorldView-3 and WorldView-2, previously built by Ball for DigitalGlobe. This included validation of cost and schedule documentation and verification of test requirements that will allow Ball Aerospace to proceed into the final manufacturing, integration and the testing phase of the program.

“The successful CDR puts us on the path to bus integration in mid- to late-2012 followed by instrument integration in 2013,” said Cary Ludtke, vice president of Ball’s Civil and Operational Space business unit. “Our mission success with DigitalGlobe is built on our proven spacecraft bus and schedule performance.”

Ball Aerospace is providing the BCP 5000 for WorldView-3 and will integrate the remote-sensing instrument onto the spacecraft bus leading to system testing. The BCP 5000’s power, stability, agility, and data storage and transmission capability, together meet the requirements to deliver comprehensive Earth remote-sensing information.

The advanced Control Moment Gyroscopes provided for all the WorldView satellites afford the flexibility and agility to capture more imagery than ever before. Ball Aerospace previously built the trio of DigitalGlobe satellites currently on orbit including WorldView-2 launched in 2009, WorldView-1 launched in 2007, and QuickBird launched in 2001.

About DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe is a leading global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery products and services. Sourced from our own advanced satellite constellation, our imagery solutions support a wide variety of uses within defense and intelligence, civil agencies, mapping and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, Internet portals and navigation technology. With our collection sources and comprehensive ImageLibrary (containing more than one billion square kilometers of earth imagery and imagery products) we offer a range of on- and off-line products and services designed to enable customers to easily access and integrate our imagery into their business operations and applications.

About Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. supports critical missions of important national agencies such as the Department of Defense, NASA, NOAA and other U.S. government and commercial entities. The company develops and manufactures spacecraft, advanced instruments and sensors, components, data exploitation systems and RF solutions for strategic, tactical and scientific applications.

About Ball Corporation

Ball Corporation is a supplier of high quality packaging for beverage, food and household products customers, and of aerospace and other technologies and services, primarily for the U.S. government. Ball Corporation and its subsidiaries employ more than 14,500 people worldwide and reported 2010 sales of more than US$ 7.6 billion.

(source: DigitalGlobe)