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18 – 22 September, Prague

One registration which covers the two SPIE events taking place in Prague from 18 – 22 September, is now available at this link.

Following a successful 2010 event, organizers SPIE told EOmag that they expect a further increase in attendance. “The exhibition subscription is on par with 2010,” says Karin Burger, Manager Europe for SPIE; “We have also seen a 19% increase in the technical paper submission to Remote Sensing, which would forecast a similar growth in final attendance in Prague.”

Hot Topics at the 2011 event are presented in the Remote Sensing plenary presentations which will deal with “Earth Observation from Space: The European Landscape in the Second Decade” by Frank Doengi of Astrium Satellites GmbH in Germany, and further with the “Evolution of Airborne Chemical and Radiological Remote Sensing for Emergency and Natural Disaster Response”, presented by Paul E. Lewis, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, United States.

For further information and detail on the technical conferences, please visit SPIE’s site. This will also take you to the related content of the collocated SPIE Security + Defence event and exhibition.”

Call for Papers for joint GRSG and OGEO workshop at ESA in Frascati December 2011


ESA , the Geological Remote Sensing Group and the Oil and Gas Earth Observation group are pleased to invite interested members of the remote sensing community to a joint workshop in Frascati from the 7th to the 9th of December.

Please find the workshop details on the official webpage: http://earth.eo.esa.int/workshops/grsg2011

Industry representatives, Service providers and Researchers are invited to submit papers / posters – and share their stories relating to any of the workshop topics:

  • Mineral exploration and processing applications of spectral remote sensing
  • Mining and minerals extraction
  • Oil exploration and planning
  • Geological mapping on the Earth and other planets
  • Monitoring/modelling geological processes
  • Geotechnical and engineering applications of remote sensing
  • Monitoring geohazards such as landslides and earthquakes

We are looking forward to meeting many of you in December

Best Regards on behalf of the workshop organising committee

Richard Eyers (GRSG Chairman) Peter Hausknecht (OGEO chairman) Ola Grabak (ESA)

One of the challenges of the geospatial community is to foster data sharing and collaboration among multiple agencies and organizations, across multiple levels of public, private and not-for-profit entities. Successful interagency data sharing and collaboration is based on adopting guiding principles, identifying best practices and recognizing the challenges, which may include policy issues, scientific issues and technological issues.

Adopt Guiding Principles for Data Sharing

Several principles apply to data sharing within all levels of government (Federal, state, regional, tribal, local), between levels of government, and between government and the private sector. These principles include:

  • Make it easy to participate. Make information accessible to all levels of users. Make it easy to contribute via a simple, unified workflow. Recognize users need information, not just data.
  • Use an enterprise approach. Look at “data sharing” systemically rather than individually. Data sharing should serve multiple objectives when possible to reduce redundancy.
  • Encourage interagency cooperation to facilitate public private coordination. Strive to improve cooperation and coordination to facilitate public-private coordination vertically and cross-sector. Consider give-get propositions and cost sharing opportunities to minimize financia impacts.
  • Create a shared knowledge environment. Identify the most important data sources and build an environment, workflow and funding mechanisms to sustain data creation, maintenance and sharing.
  • Foster and maintain a community of interest approach. Prioritize and target audiences with common interests and grow relationships within that community.
  • Document and Articulate Benefits/ROI. As data are repurposed through sharing arrangements, document and communicate the value or return on investment to help ensure continued data sharing efforts.

Identify Best Practices and Enablers

Develop data sharing partnerships using best practices from successful programs. Actual experience has identified frameworks or pre-conditions that allow data sharing to proceed more easily. Key enablers include:

  • Identify standards to access, share and integrate data. Identify and agree on common geospatial service and data transfer standards/formats to minimize costs and facilitate sharing.
  • Establish an organizational structure. Develop a data-sharing architecture based on standards and consistent input methodologies. Standardization should include common vocabulary, metadata and templates for all uses, including data, reports and applications.
  • Focus on outcomes, not just access.
  • Manage costs. Design the process to be fast and cheap. When possible, enable state, regional, tribal and local entities ride (“piggy-back on”) federal data acquisition contracts to save money.
  • Agreements should be open-ended whenever possible. Use Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) or other formal agreements to define bilateral or multilateral agreements, as required by local circumstances, polices or regulations.
  • Establish data sharing agreements. Agreements must honor and document the data-centric rights and restrictions set forth by the authoring agency. Depending on the agreement for sharing, this may also include Service Level Agreements.
  • Minimize restrictions on data, consistent with proprietary and other interests. Launch and maintain a website to promote access, provide tools and link to data and information.
  • Recognize the power of courtesy, professionalism, understanding and acceptance in building strong working relationships.

Recognize the Challenges to Interagency Data Sharing

There are myriad benefits to data sharing but also challenges that must be recognized and addressed. It is critical to recognize, explicitly, the key concerns of all parties and work to resolve those concerns. Challenges include:

  • Mission specific data. Critical information is mission specific to partners. Agency policy issues may be barriers to data sharing. Identify and define “communities of purpose” to clarify and confirm the data needed and structure a data sharing MOU template relative to each “community of purpose.”
  • Security. Find innovative ways to secure data and identities, and establish appropriate protocols. Address issues of access to data, by data type, while ensuring certain data security and system availability. In a larger context, the question of cyber security must be addressed as more data are shared via the Internet.
  • Privacy protection. Address 4th Amendment and Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385) confidentiality and privacy issues as well as intellectual property and legislative compliance in government data sharing arrangements. Invoke the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program legislation as appropriate. Additional issues related to privacy may result from the integration of multiple data sources.
  • Use of the data. Determine how data will be used to assess fitness for purpose, that is, timeliness, completeness, and accuracy, for a particular mission. Address concerns related to indemnification and liability with appropriate legal agreements. Confirm requestor and provider concurrence.
  • Value of the data. Determine specifically “what” data, from public and private sources, are of value, how to maintain the value, as well as a pricing model for data access that addresses the value proposition.
  • Policy. Evaluate policy and legislative changes at all appropriate levels of government that may be needed to support data sharing arrangements.
  • Unclear requirements and expectations for participation. Define and clarify the expectations and requirements for data sharing. Once an agency opts in, what are the options to opt out?
  • Licensing. Increasingly data are acquired by government agencies under license agreements that carry restrictions for redistribution. Define a model for sharing data acquired under license that clearly specifies and honors all relevant license terms.
  • Data sharing vs. data giving. Avoid unilateral data transfer arrangements. Many unsuccessful data sharing relationships fail when one entity wants another to give them their data, with no consideration for the long term or the ‘giving’ agency’s needs. Identify ways to achieve mutual benefit.
  • Duplicative efforts. Coordinate data sharing effort between and within agencies. Identify and eliminate duplicative efforts or consortia established for the purpose of data sharing to minimize redundancy in storage costs and data calls and to remove concerns about data integrity and primacy.

Determine a Path Forward

Consider using some of the strategies that are working for current geospatial data sharing initiatives.

  • Set up pilot programs or experiments designed to break down barriers then prototype.
  • Create small communities of interest (COI) for a prototype or pilot. Then match users one at a time based on a common issue or interest.
  • Employ a transitional build. Focus on a “build a little, test a little, and learn a lot” approach.
  • Identify and acknowledge legal or other constraints on data creators and providers.
  • Ensure the most current and accurate data are available. Identifying data stewards is a valuable first
    step.
  • Develop an outreach and communication strategy to potential user communities.
  • Provide use cases to help understand the concept and benefits.
  • Communicate the power of data sharing. Develop the community of sharing.

Successful Data Sharing Initiatives – A Selected List

Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment
The Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD) Working Group
Digital Coast Initiative
Geospatially Enabling Community Collaboration
Southwest Florida Water Management District
Federal Geographic Data Committee

Additional Resources

Licensing Geographic Data and Services
NSDI Partnership Programs: Rethinking the Focus
Promoting the NSDI Through Partnerships

National Geospatial Advisory Committee

The government of India made two major data sharing policy decisions today regarding remote sensing. They have opened up the possibility for more government agencies to own and operate remote sensing satellites other than the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and they have freed up all remote sensing imagery up to one meter resolution, where the previous restriction required data up to 5.8 meter resolution to be protected.

Both restrictions have hampered the commercial viability of the organisation, and the geospatial industry development within the country. Geospatial practitioners within the country will benefit from greater access to high-resolution imagery, given the country’s ownership of the most remote sensing satellites in the world, with ten in orbit. The military will also benefit from the relaxed restrictions, as the relaxed restrictions will allow them to own and launch their own satellites for surveillance purposes.

There was increasing public outrage about these restrictions as of late, with issues surrounding the ability to locate the missing helicopter of the Arunachal Predesh chief minister. The ten-year-policy was also blamed for the ineffective use of the ISRO archive and its resulting intelligence on change within the country.

This new policy should serve to jump-start broader remote sensing adoption, with more industries taking advantage of geospatial intelligence capabilities.

by Matt Ball on July 4, 2011. Vector-Media

PARIS — Small-satellite specialist Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) of Britain will build three high-resolution optical Earth observation satellites for a Chinese customer that has agreed to pay most of the system’s construction, launch and insurance costs up front in return for seven years’ exclusive use of the imagery, SSTL announced June 29.

Beijing-based Twenty-First Century Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd. (21AT) will be paying 110 million British pounds ($170.2 million) to cover the entire cost of the three satellites’ delivery in orbit, expected to occur in 2014.

Guildford-based SSTL will be building the 1-meter-resolution spacecraft under contract to its subsidiary, DMC International Imaging Ltd., which currently operates a small fleet of disaster-monitoring Earth observation satellites called the Disaster Monitoring Constellation.

The 21AT company has been a partner in this constellation and financed the construction and launch, by SSTL, of the Beijing-1 satellite, which has a 4-meter ground resolution and has been in orbit since 2005.

Under the contract announced June 29 and signed June 27 in the presence of British Prime Minister David Cameron and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, 21AT will make a series of payments, beginning immediately, that will be used to build the three satellites.

Sir Martin Sweeting, SSTL’s founder and chairman, said neither SSTL nor its DMC subsidiary will need outside financing to build, launch and insure the three satellites given the timing of the payments expected from 21AT.

In a June 29 interview, Sir Martin said the British and Chinese parties have agreed that any unforeseen increases in launch or insurance costs will be financed by 21AT. “We have estimated these costs conservatively, but of course we cannot be sure of what the market rate will be until we go to the market to contract the launch or the insurance,” Sir Martin said.

The three identical satellites will be evolved versions of the spacecraft design that SSTL has been building for a number of years, with the most recent models built for Nigeria as part of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation. These spacecraft are scheduled for launch aboard a Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr converted ballistic missile in the coming weeks.

For the 21AT contract, Sir Martin said SSTL and the British government consulted with the U.S. government to calm any concerns about technology transfer as the spacecraft are built.

SSTL and DMC, based on their experience with the Disaster Monitoring Constellation, for the past year have been seeking partners for what they called the DMC3 constellation, which would employ a business model resembling the sale of satellite telecommunications bandwidth.

Instead of owning the satellites or operating them, DMC3 customers would lease a certain amount of capacity — meaning image-taking ability — over a certain amount of time. Depending on the capacity agreed to, other customers would also use the satellites.

Sir Martin said SSTL and DMC have focused on 21AT almost exclusively in recent months as the first DMC3 customer because of the exceptionally large demand in China for Earth observation for urban planning and general land management in addition to disaster monitoring.

“When we talked to them about it, they said they could use basically all the capacity we had on the three satellites,” Sir Martin said. “Now that we have this contract under our belts we will look for other customers to add a fourth satellite.”

For 21AT, adding a fourth satellite would build backup capacity in to the constellation and also reduce the amount of time between visits of a satellite over a given area of China. The contracted image requirement for 21AT then would be spread over four satellites instead of three.

The satellites being developed are expected to weigh about 350 kilograms at launch and to offer a ground resolution of 1 meter in black-and-white mode, and 4 meters in color. Ground resolution means the diameter of an object that could be detected by the satellite, if not necessarily identified with precision.

Each spacecraft will be able to swivel on its axis by 45 degrees off nadir, permitting it to image areas not directly beneath it and thus increasing the revisit rate. Each image will have a swath of 23 kilometers.

The satellites will have an on-board memory storage capacity of 128 gigabytes and an image-transmission capability of 320 megabits per second.

The Chinese customer will be able to command the satellite to take images of a given area, but will not have control of the spacecraft. No Chinese engineers will be trained in satellite design for the program, and for the moment SSTL has no intention of launching the satellites aboard a Chinese rocket. These concessions were made to reassure British and U.S. government officials that the transaction steers clear of technology-transfer concerns, which in the United States are known as ITAR rules, or International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

Sir Martin said that while the transaction might be seen as competing with current and planned Earth observation satellites owned by Astrium Services — which like SSTL is owned by the Astrium division of Europe’s EADS aerospace giant — the deal would have been more difficult to accomplish without the help of Astrium and EADS.

“EADS provided us with financial guarantees for the customer that our former owner, the University of Surrey, could not have provided,” Sir Martin said, referring to guarantees that would reimburse 21AT in the event of a contract breach by DMC or SSTL .

Source

by P. de Selding

The Allied System for Geospatial Intelligence (ASG) joins Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to form an international GEOINT community, with each member building on the contributions of others and underlining the strengths of each nation. The ASG tackles issues ranging from standards to technology, from training to fulfilling joint requirements in the topographic, aeronautical and nautical areas, as well as joint requirements in-theatre. By working in close coordination with all international partners, the allied forces are able to reduce redundancies, share the burden of data collection, leverage regional expertise and ultimately improve the efficiency and effectiveness in achieving their mission.

Defence Geospatial Intelligence (DGI) 2012 is where all key decision-makers and strategic thinkers responsible for this and many other missions will be discussing their plans, strategies and future requirements. If these are your customers and partners, then you need to be at DGI 2012 in Westminster, London on 23-27th of January.

The conference and exhibition are taking place over 4 days and are designed to attract over 700 senior intelligence, geospatial and architecture officers from defence and national security organisations the world over. As many as 45 countries send their heads of geoint to the event, because they see it as the key meeting place for the geo community and they get so many new strategies and new technologies from it.

It is not surprising that DGI is such a successful industry event. After all it has been designed, created and prepared for you by the Industry Advisory Board, the people at the forefront of the latest GeoInt developments in Europe, North America and the world over. The topics, panel discussions, questions and speakers have been chosen specifically to give you new ideas, strategies and solutions that they need in your current and future missions.

Why you need to be at DGI 2012 listening and meeting with the community

The strategic importance of partnerships with the industry grows every day. The world’s defence and intelligence organisations continue to strengthen and deepen their ties both on the national and on international levels as they move forward together to create an intelligence and decision advantage for their decision makers, warfighters and international partners.

The task becomes impossible without your contribution, ideas and solutions. Each speaker and delegate will be looking for new ideas, finding new solutions and shopping for technologies to match the requirements of their latest programme, project and mission.

They rely upon the industry to bring them the solutions and ideas – You must be there in person if you want to win their business, trust and partnership!

DGI continues as the premier geospatial intelligence conference in Europe providing great opportunities to learn more about the issues, opportunities and technology facing providers and consumers of GEOINT. The balance of formal presentations and focus days, combined with great networking among leading government, academic and industry executives, makes this a compelling event. 2011 was the best yet”. John Day, Director of Defence Business Development, Esri

DGI has provided us with a concrete opportunity to further develop our collaborative approach with defense and security users aimed at demonstrating innovative monitoring services in response to needs of specific pilot cases selected by the users”. Marcello Maranesi, CEO, e-GEOS

Conference Focus & Innovation:

Every year DGI brings the new themes, topics and challenges to the top of its agenda. We spend months finding what new solutions, strategies and topics are on the agendas of our delegates, to bring them case studies, solutions and products they need to achieve their goals. This year the key new developments at DGI 2012 include…

1. Maps to Apps Focus Focused on delivering online on demand and on time data, information and analysis to each user in-theatre and in HQ

2. GIS Architecture & Mission Management Focus The way you build your GIS system and its flexibility determines its effectiveness, its ability to collaborate with other agencies and its strength in operations. The architecture stream aims to focus on the challenges GIS professionals have when designing and modifying their systems. It will discuss the practical realities of providing information and managing data on the day-to-day basis

3. GIS in C4ISR as part of Architecture As GIS becomes omniscient in all parts of the defence organisation, it is imperative that all decisions made by C4ISR are made off a map and are supported by the latest GIS technologies. For the first time ever DGI is aiming to cover the GIS strategies and tools used within C4ISR. These are big strategic capabilities based on GIS or involving GIS.

4. Operational Focus DGI is moving away from theory into practical operational case studies, that will focus on current and latest GIS strategies from war theatres around the globe. Real life examples, successful strategies and plans for the future will be discussed by operational military GIS personnel from around the world.

5. Human Geography Focus Using not only military force, but intelligence about the local people has proven to be one of the most effective new strategies in Afghanistan, Lybia and many other in-theatre operations.

6. Intelligence Expansion As interoperability and collaboration become increasingly important, different governmental agencies are striving to work together on their GIS resources and capabilities. Duplication of efforts and resources is one of the largest problems in GIS generally. There will be a number of case studies focusing on the current GIS strategies and operational successes in preparation for the Olympic Games in London, London Transport GIS, anti-terrorism work around the European cities, use of imagery and data in border control and crime prevention and many others.

7. MENA Focus this year the conference will devote a special day to the latest programmes, challenges and strategies used in the GeoInt community in the Middle East and North Africa. If your business plan includes growth in the MENA region, then you must attend this conference day.

REGISTERING NOW WILL SAVE YOU UP TO £1000

Registration / requesting more information is simple:
1 – Online at www.DefenceGeospatial.com
2 – Email us on dgi@wbr.co.uk to request the latestagenda / find out more information
3 – Call us on +44 (0) 20 7368 9465
P.S. Interested in exhibiting your solutions at DGI 2012? Contact Herve Bavazanno today to discuss your business needs on +44 (0)20 7368 9721 or email dgi@wbr.co.uk

CONFIRMED ADVISORY BOARD & SPEAKERS:
The DGI 2012 Advisory Board is instrumental in creating the conference agenda, selecting speakers and ensuring that DGI 2012 focuses on the challenges and issues of defence GIS community globally. The confirmed DGI 2012 conference advisory board includes:

  • Col. Mark Burrows Commander, JAGO, UK MOD
  • Lt. Col. Neil Marks, National Expert, Council of the European Union
  • Marlene Meyer Head of Defence, Geospatial Organisation Denmark
  • Helen Owens Geo, Capability Manager, Australian Defence Organisation
  • Col. John Kedar, Chief of Staff Headquarters, Engineer in Chief (Army), UK MOD
  • Captain Kjetil Utne Director, Military Geographic Service, Norwegian MOD
  • Babis Paraschou, Chief Geospatial Officer, NATO Deployment Corps, Greece
  • Michael Powers, Technical Director, Geospatial Research and Engineering, US Army
  • Steve Pyatt Director, GEOINT Policy and Plans, MoD New Zealand
  • Steven Ramage, Executive Director, Marketing and Communications, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
  • Brigadier Jim Hockenhull, D ISTAR, UK MOD
  • John Teufert, NC3A Geo-Officer, NATO C3 Agency
  • Richard Smith, Force Information Manager, British Transport Police
  • Captain Stephen Malcolm, Royal Navy, UK MOD
  • Brig. General (ret) Amnon Sofrin, Head of The Intelligence Directorate, Israeli Intelligence Service (ISIS)
  • John Knight Principal, Royal School of Military, UK MOD

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS ALREADY INCLUDE:

  • Kenneth Pugh, Head of Geo, Navy, MOD Chile
  • Frank Colley, Assistant Secretary Defence GEOINT, Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation (DIGO), Australian DoD
  • Lt. Col. Pat Fryer, Section Head Geospatial Policy & Operations, SHAPE, NATO
  • Leendert Bal, Director, European Maritime Safety Agency
  • Geoff Twentyman, Multi-Int Expert, DSTL, UK MOD
  • Vice Admiral Robert B. Murrett, Deputy Director, Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT)
  • Susanne Yoakum-Stover, Executive Director, Institute For Modern Intelligence Henderson Cooper (ret), LAPD
  • Vanessa Lawrence, CEO, Ordnance Survey
  • Brigadier James Chiswell, 16th Air Assault Brigade, UK MOD
  • Nick Davis, Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre (WMWC)
  • Eliza Manningham-Buller, Former Head, MI5
  • Andy Marles, Chief Fire Officer, South Wales Fire & Rescue
  • Col (ret) Neil Thompson, Managing Director, WC Group

Sept. 15 & 16, 2011 Paris

The 3rd Symposium on Earth Observation will take place on September 15 and 16, 2011 at the Westin in Paris. The event will feature 40 high-level high level speakers and gather about 200 decision makers representing leading and emerging Earth observation (EO) satellite operators, manufacturers, government & private services as well as end users.

The 3rd Symposium on Earth Observation is part of the World Satellite Business Week (September 12 to 16). The program, list of speakers, social events, sponsors… are available on the event’s website

Should you have any questions regarding the Symposium and the Summit, please contact Eurconsult: Linda Zaiche, Communications & Events Manager, Tel: + 33 (0) 149237517

The SERVIR program, a joint project of NASA and USAID, is named after the Spanish word meaning “to serve”, and it is doing exactly that; it provides web-based satellite images and other data to scientists, environmental managers, and decision makers.

With this data being made ready and available, policy choices can be made regarding climate change, biodiversity, flooding, forest fires, and storms by addressing the variability of these issues.

On April 25, 2011, NASA’s administrator Charles Bolden and USAID’s administrator Rajiv Shah met to agree on a 5 year memorandum of understanding to address and assist global disasters primarily in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Himalayas.

Source

EOportal

29 June 2011. This ESPI Report takes an insight into the impact of non-space specific regulations on the development of commercial space activities and space based services and highlights the importance of developing an appropriate regulatory framework to support a competitive space sector.

ESPI Report 36 on “Economic and Policy Aspects of Space Regulations in Europe. Part 2: Space Regulations – On Track for Space Technologies and Space Based Services”, prepared by ESPI Associate Fellow Matxalen Sánchez Aranzamendi, is the second part of a set of two studies dedicated to analysing the impact of National Space Legislation and Regulations on the development of commercial space activities in Europe. While Part 1, prepared by the same author, was dedicated to space activties per se and their legislation (see related webnews here), the present Part 2 focuses on the development of space technologies and space based services and the regulations concerning them. It aims at drawing attention to the relevance of non-space specific regulations and their impacts on the development of the commercial space sector with particular attention on Europe. It intends to convey the message that an appropriate regulatory framework is essential for a competitive space sector.

To that aim, ESPI Report 36 selected three different non-space specific regulatory fields, radio-regulations, data policy and export controls. It analyses how these regulatory fields interact with the development of space technologies and space based regulations and depicts three different scenarios according to the different ways non-space specific regulations affect the space sector. Ways for canalising the potential of non-space specific regulations are identified for each of the three scenarios and recommendations are drawn on those grounds. This study has been conducted by ESPI Associate Fellow Matxalen Sánchez Aranzamendi, who represents ESPI in Brussels and who has already prepared Part 1 of the study contained in ESPI Report 21 as a Resident Fellow in Vienna.

Source

New Agreement Advances Development of Russia’s Commercial Geospatial Information Market


HERNDON, Va., July 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — GeoEye, Inc. (NASDAQ: GEOY), a leading source of geospatial information and insight, announced that it has signed a multi-year, multi-million-dollar agreement with its Russian partner, ScanEx Research and Development Center, to provide more than 50 million square kilometers of high-resolution commercial satellite imagery for international customers in Russia and its neighboring countries.

GeoEye will deliver high-resolution IKONOS imagery from its extensive color imagery archive and new imagery to be collected through 2012. This new agreement expands the 2010 agreement where GeoEye provided ScanEx over two million square kilometers of imagery. The scope of this new agreement underscores the international commercial market’s increasing demand for high-resolution satellite imagery and services.

Olga Gershenzon, founder and vice president of ScanEx, said, “We are certain that this project, similar to the Landsat program in the 1980s, will stimulate development of advanced remote-sensing applications based on GeoEye’s high-resolution imagery. We appreciate our strong and evolving partnership with GeoEye and value their support and confidence.”

Chris Tully, GeoEye’s senior vice president of Sales, said, “GeoEye and ScanEx have enjoyed a productive partnership since 2009. We are continually impressed by the creativity, entrepreneurship and contributions they have demonstrated by providing innovative tools and services to advance the Russian Earth-observation market.”

About ScanEx

ScanEx Research and Development Center is the leading Russian company in the remote sensing market that offers services ranging from acquisition to thematic processing of Earth-observation images from space. ScanEx’s offerings include designing and manufacturing of hardware and software systems for spatial data reception and processing, development of software applications for satellite data reception and storage, processing and interpretation. ScanEx catalogues imagery data from leading remote sensing programs and generates thematic products, renderings and Web-mapping services.

About GeoEye

GeoEye is a leading source of geospatial information and insight for decision makers and analysts who need a clear understanding of our changing world to protect lives, manage risk and optimize resources. Each day, organizations in defense and intelligence, public safety, critical infrastructure, energy and online media rely on GeoEye’s imagery, tools and expertise to support important missions around the globe. Widely recognized as a pioneer in high-resolution satellite imagery, GeoEye has evolved into a complete provider of geospatial intelligence solutions. GeoEye’s ability to collect, process and analyze massive amounts of geospatial data allows our customers to quickly see precise changes on the ground and anticipate where events may occur in the future. GeoEye is a public company listed on NASDAQ as GEOY and is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia with more than 700 employees worldwide. Learn more at www.geoeye.com.

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Without limitation, the words “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “will” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All statements that address operating performance, events or developments that we expect or anticipate will occur in the future, including statements relating to growth, expected levels of expenditures and statements expressing general optimism about future operating results, are forward-looking statements. Similarly, statements that describe our business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions or goals also are forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements and those presented elsewhere by our management from time to time are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those described in “Risk Factors” included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2010, which we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on March 15, 2011, and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2011, which we filed with the SEC on May 10, 2011. Copies of all SEC filings may be obtained from the SEC’s EDGAR Web site, http://www.sec.gov/, or by contacting: William L. Warren, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, at 703-480-5672.

SOURCE GeoEye, Inc.