GeoEye Launches $502 Million Imaging Satellite
On Saturday, GeoEye Inc. successfully launched its new GeoEye-1 satellite, which will provide Google Earth, and the U.S. government with the highest-resolution color imagery available.
According to GeoEye Chief Executive Matthew O’Connell “it was a picture-perfect launch.”
"Everybody is now slapping high fives," O’Connell said.
O’Connell also added that it will be 30 to 45 days before the satellite’s camera will be calibrated and GeoEye can begin receiving images.
The spacecraft will be capable of capturing images up to 5.5 feet in color, but will be limited to 1.64 feet resolution by government regulations.
The satellite will photograph the Earth from 423 miles away, moving at 4.5 miles per second.
According to O’Connell, the $502 million satellite will create a lot of opportunities for GeoEye. The company spent four years developing the spacecraft.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were on site to watch the satellite’s trip into space.
GeoEye currently has other satellites that provide images to Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google, but Google will be the only company to receive online-search mapping images from the GeoEye-1 satellite.
The new color images mean that Google Earth, and Google Maps will be able to give their users more detailed images in the next three to four months when the new images are processed.
Digital Globe, GeoEye’s main rival, launched its new high-resolution satellite, WorldView-1, in late 2007. The WorldView-1 is capable of gathering half-meter resolution images in black and white.
The GeoEye-1 satellite was built by General Dynamics and features an imaging system built by ITT Corp. Lockheed Martin and Boeing’s joint venture, United Launch Alliance, launched the spacecraft.
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