PARIS — Earth imagery provider GeoEye on Jan. 4 said it signed a new multimillion-dollar agreement with Russia’s ScanEx company to complete a national map of Russian land properties.
Under the contract, Herndon, Va.-based GeoEye will provide Moscow-based ScanEx with imagery from GeoEye’s archive of data taken by the GeoEye-1 high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite. In the second phase of what GeoEye said is a multiyear agreement, GeoEye starting in 2012 will provide ScanEx with new imagery of Russian territory to support the creation of a nationwide map of land properties.
This is the latest in a series of contracts ScanEx has signed with GeoEye and with Europe’s Astrium Services, which operates the Spot 5 medium-resolution satellite and is building two similar follow-on spacecraft, Spot 6 and Spot 7.
ScanEx’s earlier contract with GeoEye, which GeoEye similarly characterized as valued at several million dollars, called for imagery to be provided by GeoEye’s older Ikonos satellite.
ScanEx is under contract to the Russian Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography to provide maps of all Russian property. Olga Gershenzon, ScanEx’s founder and vice president, said in a Jan. 4 statement that the company has already mapped 49 million land parcels and placed them in a Web-based system for use by Russian government agencies and the public, with the Web portal attracting 12,000 visits per day.
“It is important that ScanEx complete this project on deadline,” Gershenzon said. “[T]o execute this contract, we are acquiring significant amounts of GeoEye-1 imagery.”
