Orbimage Wins $500 Million Satellite Imagery Contract from NGA

An artist's rendering of ORBIMAGE's planned OrbView-5 satellite. (Image courtesy of General Dynamics Corporation)

DULLES, Va., Oct. 1/Satnews Daily/ — The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, NIMA) has awarded Orbimage Inc. (Pink Sheets: ORBM) a major contract worth up to $500 million.

NGA announced yesterday it has selected Orbimage as its NextView second vendor after a competitive selection process conducted over the last six months. The contract runs through September 30, 2008 and will provide Orbimage with both long-term revenue commitments as well as capital for the development of OrbView-5, Orbimage 's next-generation high-resolution imaging satellite.

The contract, known as NextView Orbimage, assures NGA of greater access and priority to high-resolution commercial satellite imagery. It also gives priority to Pentagon access to four years of high-resolution commercial satellite imagery, especially in times of war.

Orbimage competed with a much bigger company, Spy Imaging, which owns Ikonos satellite, for the contract. Space Imaging’s failure to win the contract has now cast doubt on its long-term survival. Ikonos satellite, launched in 1999 is expected to deteriorate in 2007 and without the NextView contract, Space Imaging will have difficulty getting financing for a second satellite.

Report say it might make sense for Space Imaging to sell its assets to other companies such as DigitalGlobe or even Orbimage.

NGA Director retired USAF Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr. said in a statement the agreement is a key development for both NGA and the commercial remote sensing industry. “We need the next generation of commercial satellites to help us do our job and we look forward to working with both NextView vendors to bring this new capability to fruition," he said.

Orbimage 's principal partners for the development and launch of the OrbView-5 satellite include General Dynamics (formerly Spectrum Astro), Kodak/ITT Industries and Boeing Launch Services. Orbimage’s partners for the ground segment include IBM and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates of Canada.

Orbimage's next-generation OrbView-5 satellite system will orbit 660 km above the Earth in a sun-synchronous orbit while collecting imagery at 0.41 meter resolution in the panchromatic (black and white) mode, and 1.64 meter resolution in the multispectral (color) mode. When OrbView-5 joins the company's OrbView-3 satellite in early 2007, the constellation will collect more than 1.2 million square kilometer of imagery per day with a combined revisit period of less than 1.5 days for any geographic target. 

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