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The Billion-Dollar Promise: Clearview Contract and Greater Imagery Availability Move U.S. Satellite Commercial Imaging Market Forward. |
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Source: Frost & Sullivan; published Feb. 21, 2003
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The U.S. government promise to commit to the purchase of U.S.-based commercial satellite imagery, often heard but never codified seems finally to have fallen into place in the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) multi-year contracts collectively referred to as CLEARVIEW and announced on January 17, 2003. The CLEARVIEW maximum contract value is $500 million each over five years, and signals a big step forward in the oft times uneasy contract courtship between U.S. satellite imagery providers and the U.S. government.
In the five years since 1998 a number of market developments, licensing questions, and uncertainty regarding the ability and willingness of U.S. military and civilian government entities to embrace commercial imagery needed airing and repairing.
The initial proposed $1 billion over five years was floated in 1998, when there were plans for six U.S.-operated commercial remote sensing satellites with panchromatic spatial resolutions of 1-meter. Four separate launch failures from three separate companies have led to a situation where DigitalGlobe's Quickbird and Space Imaging's Ikonos are the two operational satellites set to immediately provide imagery to fulfill the CLEARVIEW contracts.
Data licensing had traditionally been a thorny issue for U.S. government buyers, but the CLEARVIEW contracts enable government users to share data with a number of specified government and non-government entities. U.S.-based satellite data providers are hopeful that data sharing will wet the thirst of newer users for imagery and information. Without long-term U.S. government purchase commitments these licensing issues would have been a far greater hurdle. However important the CLEARVIEW contracts are, NIMA is but one of a great number of U.S. government organizations that have yet to commit to the purchase of satellite data. The needs of organizations such as the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and others will surely differ greatly, but CLEARVIEW can be an opportunity for greater exposure.
For years, satellite data providers have urged the U.S. government to embrace commercial imagery, and results of operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan may well have helped their collective cause. Communications bandwidth, an important prerequisite for the transfer of high-resolution imagery is becoming less of an issue for the military. Just a few years ago, commercial satellite imagery was literally flown into various theaters of operations and hand-delivered via CD. There also has been an organizational reluctance to shy away from National Technical Means and embrace commercial imagery. Oddly enough, there is perceived competition for dollars between the DoD and commercial data providers. There is a fear that monies allocated for commercial imagery purchases will come directly out of the operating budgets for organizations such as NIMA and others. It is hard to say how much truth is in such a sentiment, but in this case the perception seems to have driven the reality.
This situation is changing, but it has taken time. NIMA and The U.S. Department of Defense use commercial satellite imagery for applications as diverse as facilities management, military operations, battle damage assessments and humanitarian assistance, and the open" nature of commercial imagery means there are fewer restrictions when need arises to share this imagery with allies.
Coincidentally, a convergence of evolving technologies, from communications to positioning is also helping to ease commercial imagery integration pains, in this case for disaster management. Just three hours after the Shuttle Columbia disaster, SpaceImaging tasked Ikonos and imaged 3,000 square kilometers of the East Texas debris field in just 10 minutes. Three days later Ikonos imaged another 7,000 square kilometers of debris fields. Debris locations are being coded with GPS coordinates and entered into a geographic information system (GIS). SpaceImaging is allowing a great deal of data sharing with government and non-government entities that are assisting in the recovery and investigation of this disaster. This is but one example of how U.S.-based satellite data providers can immediately contribute to several contingencies.
Satellite imagery is becoming a meaningful contributor to government's immediate information needs, and industry hopes CLEARVIEW will continue this trend.
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