Sharper Satellite Images

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This image of the Colorado capitol building in Denver has a resolution of 0.50 meters, demonstrating the level of detail that the new satellite will be able to provide to the general public. The satellite will be capable of collecting data at a resolution of 0.41 meters, but due to federal restrictions, it will be able to release only 0.50-meter data for commercial use. Credit: GeoEye

One reason satellite imagery is becoming important to scientists studying climate change, says Garvin, is that the quality is beginning to rival that of aerial photography. With high-resolution satellite imagery, scientists will be able to look back in time, comparing current images to a wealth of historical images taken from airplanes--a trove that dates back to the advent of large-scale aerial reconnaissance in World War II.

"One of the things that's really hard to do is detect very subtle landscape changes at the boundaries between landscape systems--the edge of the ocean, the coastline, the beach zone," Garvin says. "The resolving power of this soon-to-be-launched satellite will dramatically extend what we can measure from space in several different environmental disciplines."

About half of GeoEye's roughly $200 million in yearly revenue comes from the federal government. The rest, O'Connell says, is made up of private-industry and international sales.

Although the company has been reluctant to discuss the details of its business relationships with major online providers, GeoEye currently sells satellite images to Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. As the online providers update their imagery, the new satellite will make much higher-quality data available for free to the general public. Though that may seem like giving away the store, O'Connell says, it doesn't hurt GeoEye's business, since most of its customers in research and industry want custom imagery and more data than sites like GoogleEarth make available.

"It's been a great additional source of revenue and a great marketing technique," he says. "People see our images online and say, 'Oh, man--what I could do with this stuff.'"

GeoEye-1 was originally scheduled to take flight in April, but the launch provider, Boeing Launch Services, delayed the launch to make way for a U.S. government mission.

Plans are already in the works for GeoEye-2, a satellite that will be able to image objects that measure a mere 0.06 square meters. GeoEye-2 is scheduled to launch sometime in 2011 or 2012.