PARIS — European Space Imaging on Jan. 22 said it had won a four-year contract with the European Commission valued at 22.3 million euros ($30.1 million) to provide satellite data supporting the commission’s Common Agricultural Policy, whose enforcement includes verification of land use.
Munich-based European Space Imaging is a Direct Access Partner of DigitalGlobe of Longmont, Colo. As such it directly tasks DigitalGlobe’s high-resolution satellites for sale and distribution in the company’s sales region in Europe and North Africa.
Satellite imagery with a ground resolution sharper than 50 centimeters in black and white, and 2 meters in color, is degraded to these levels to meet U.S. regulations on commercial data sales. DigitalGlobe has asked the U.S. government to relax these limits.
European Space Imaging’s contract with the commission’s Joint Research Center will feature contributions from its partners GAF of Germany, which provides software for image processing, and the German Aerospace Center, DLR, whose Oberpfaffenhofen facility is supporting the project.
The company said it has supplied two-thirds of the imagery in support of the commission’s agricultural support program in the past 10 years.
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