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Huge Commercial Satellite Imagery Contracts Awarded

08.16.10 | 1 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded two large contracts for commercial satellite imagery to meet U.S. intelligence community needs. DigitalGlobe received a contract worth $3.5 billion and GeoEye received another worth $3.8 billion over ten years, according to an August 6 news release (pdf) from NGA.  The contracts “will help meet the increasing geospatial intelligence needs of the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense,” NGA said.

“This is such good news for the commercial satellite imagery industry,” said Mark Brender of GeoEye.  “Our government is really moving to ‘outsource overhead’,” he said.

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