The first-ever commercial Earth-imaging satellite in our planet's orbit has just turned 11, officials at Lockheed Martin are proud to announce. The instrument was designed and built by the company. This is a momentous day for the corporation, which celebrates the successful launch and operations of a commercial high-resolution satellite that has been keeping an eye on the ground for more than a decade.
At this point, the spacecraft is now operated by GeoEye Inc., which took control from Lockheed after the satellite made it safely to its orbital perch.
IKONOS launched on September 24, 1999, from the Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), in California. It was carried to orbit aboard an Athena 2 delivery system.
Since commissioning, the satellite has provided worldwide commercial and government customers with high-resolution images of the planet.
“The spacecraft continues to collect 0.82-meter resolution black-and-white images while simultaneously collecting four-meter resolution multi-spectral data more than four years beyond its initial design life,” a
press release on the Lockheed website informs.
The data that the instruments aboard the spacecraft collects are used for land management, environmental monitoring, local and regional government, national security, and disaster relief, among other applications.
To celebrate this tremendous success, the corporation is already working on a replacement for the IKONOS, which is called GeoEye-2.
The System Requirements Review for the new instrument – which has been under development for two years – has been passed this August.
“We are proud of the high performance and longevity of IKONOS and the significant value it is providing to GeoEye and its customers around the globe,” explains official Allen Anderson.
“We look forward to delivering even greater remote sensing capabilities as we work swiftly to deliver a total system solution and achieve mission success on the GeoEye-2 program,” adds Anderson, who is the program director for GeoEye-2 at Lockheed Martin.
GeoEye-2 is a planned satellite that the corporation is currently designing and building. It represents the next generation of Earth-observation satellites, and it will exceed its predecessor's performances several times over.
At this point, it is scheduled to become operational in early 2013, after being launched to space aboard an Atlas V delivery system provided by the Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services
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