DigitalGlobe announced it has won a contract in excess of $500 million issued by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to assure the availability of imagery from the next-generation, commercial high-resolution imaging satellites.

"This contract win is a resounding show of support by our federal government," said Herb Satterlee, CEO and chairman of DigitalGlobe. "The NextView contract further advances the high-resolution commercial satellite imagery industry and ensures the U.S. remains the world leader in this cutting-edge technology. The award allows us to accelerate our plans for our next generation system which will provide even greater capability and capacity to our customers."

NIMA's Director, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., was quoted in NIMA's press release as saying, "NIMA's NextView effort is a significant milestone for our Agency, It represents NIMA's commitment toward guaranteeing our nation maintains a technological edge in satellite imagery technology. It also supports our ability to implement commercial remote sensing policies established by the President and the Director of Central Intelligence. NIMA relies on a robust commercial imagery capability to help fulfill its obligations in support of national defense, and we are pleased to have DigitalGlobe on the Geospatial Intelligence team."

DigitalGlobe is working with industry leaders to substantially improve resolution, collection capacity and revisit capabilities with the next generation system, called the WorldView imaging system. The WorldView imaging system will serve all of DigitalGlobe's customers including satisfying the NextView contract requirements. DigitalGlobe's list of satellite and launch vehicle partners includes Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp and Boeing Launch Services. In addition to the Space segment partners DigitalGlobe has assembled the industry leaders to work on the Ground segment. BAE SYSTEMS is the lead for the Production Segment development team and also for coproduction. Other partners include Boeing Autometric, AERO-METRIC, EarthData, ESRI, Harris Corp., IBM, and InSequence, offering coproduction, internal business systems, e-commerce solutions, other software components and systems engineering. DigitalGlobe has also teamed with Chantilly, Virg.-based Spot, the American subsidiary of France's Spot Image, as an alternative imagery supplier.

DigitalGlobe is an Earth imagery and information company in Longmont, Colo., USA. With the 2001 launch of its QuickBird satellite, DigitalGlobe has established a market leadership position. The company offers the world's highest resolution commercial satellite imagery, the most up-to-date archive, the largest image size, and the greatest on-board storage capacity of any satellite imagery provider. The competition has no plans to launch a comparable commercial satellite until at least 2006. In addition to offering technical superiority, DigitalGlobe distinguishes itself in the market through its commitment to excellent customer service, relationships with business partners and open-systems philosophy.