International Production and Assessment Division (IPAD), Office of Global Analysis (OGA), Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), have announced DMCii, Guildford, U.K., as the latest addition to the Prime Vendor Contract. Under the contract, DMCii International Imaging Ltd., (DMCii) will provide the IPAD/Office of Global Analysis/FAS/USDA with high quality 22m and 32m multispectral imagery from the DMC constellation of wide-swath (650km) satellites, which collectively offer a daily revisit.

The latest satellites to join the constellation — UK-DMC-2 and Deimos-1 — were launched successfully on July 29, 2009 and will be fully calibrated and operational in November 2009, at which point they will join the existing constellation of four satellites. As well as offering enhanced resolution (doubling the number of pixels per hectare), these satellites bring significantly increased imaging capacity to the constellation, creating the ability for multi-temporal monitoring at continental scale.

USDA will be able to order new imaging campaigns for its global areas of interest and also access the extensive archive of DMC imagery. All DMC satellites acquire data in channels equivalent to Landsat bands 2, 3 and 4, and two product levels are available — L1R (band/bank registered and radiometrically corrected) and L1T (L1R steps plus orthorectification). Two further satellites will be added to the DMC in 2010, adding yet more capacity and continuity to the constellation.

The IPAD/OGA/FAS/USDA is responsible for global crop condition assessments and estimates of area, yield, and production for grains, oilseeds, and cotton. The primary mission of OGA is to target, collect, analyze, and disseminate timely, objective, useful, and cost-effective global crop condition and agricultural market intelligence information. One of the IPAD/OGA/FAS/USDA key missions is to provide unbiased commodity estimates and forecasts to create a marketing edge for U.S. producers in world markets.  (Source: USDA and NASA) The Prime Vendor Contract vehicle allows them to obtain agriculture analysis solutions using satellite imagery and ancillary information quickly and cost effectively.