By Geoff Fein
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) last week awarded a $3.5 billion contract to DigitalGlobe and $3.8 billion to GeoEye Imagery Collection Systems [GEOY] for the EnhancedView commercial imagery program, the follow-on to the agency’s NextView effort, according to the NGA.
These competitively awarded contracts support the EnhancedView Program by providing products and services that will help meet the increasing geospatial intelligence needs of the intelligence community and Department of Defense, NGA said in a statement.
EnhancedView will provide greater access, priority tasking and improved capability and capacity to government customers from the next series of U.S. commercial imagery satellites, NGA added.
“These contracts will meet NGA, Intelligence Community and Department of Defense needs for additional amounts of imagery beyond what current contracts provide as well as support humanitarian and crisis support efforts,” according to NGA.
“DigitalGlobe’s portion of the $7.3 billion in contracts for the EnhancedView Service Level Agreement (SLA) portion of the award is sized at $2.8 billion over the term of the contract; $250 million annually, for the first four contract years, commencing Sept. 1, 2010, with an increase to $300 million annually, for the remaining six years of the agreement term,” the company said in a statement. “To support requirements under the agreement, DigitalGlobe will immediately begin procurement and construction of its next satellite, WorldView-3, which the company anticipates will be ready for launch by the end of 2014,” the company said.
Colorado-based DigitalGlobe launched its WorldView-1 satellite on Sept. 18, 2007, under NGA’s NextView program (Defense Daily, Sept. 19, 2007).
A year later, on Sept. 6, 2008, GeoEye launched its GeoEye-1 satellite, under the NextView program.
GeoEye has since partnered with Lockheed Martin [LMT] to build the geospatial imagery company’s next-generation, high-resolution Earth imaging satellite system known as GeoEye-2 (Defense Daily, March 12).
“The (EnhancedView) contract is for augmented capacity in the form of engineering, construction, and the launch of our GeoEye-2 satellite, and the design and procurement of associated ground station equipment,” Matt O’Connell, GeoEye chief executive officer, said in an e-mail sent to employees last week. “It also includes imagery delivery under an EnhancedView SLA for a 10-year period funded in one-year increments. This new SLA begins on Sept. 1 and replaces the current NextView SLA with the NGA.”