By Geoff Fein

GeoEye, Inc. [GEOY] last week said it has selected Lockheed Martin [LMT] to build the geospatial imagery company’s next- generation, high-resolution Earth imaging satellite system known as GeoEye-2, according to Lockheed Martin.

Additionally, GeoEye and Digital Globe earlier this week submitted bids for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) EnhancedView program, the follow-on to NextView.

A contract award for EnhancedView is expected this summer.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems has begun start-up activities and procurement of long-lead components to support the earliest possible launch date for GeoEye-2. This effort will lead to a contract award for the design, engineering and manufacturing of the satellite and the associated command and control system, the company said.

“GeoEye-2 will be the same class of satellite as GeoEye-1 but will benefit from significant improvements in capabilities to better serve our customers’ demands for increased quantities of imagery at higher resolution. Some of these improvements include enhanced tasking capabilities and the ability to collect more imagery at a faster rate,” Bill Schuster, GeoEye’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.

GeoEye has been working on its follow-on to the GeoEye-1 imagery satellite since Oct. 2007, when it contracted with ITT‘s [ITT] Geospatial Systems Division to begin advance work on the high-resolution camera for GeoEye-2.

ITT built the imaging system for GeoEye-1.

GeoEye-1 launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., September 2008.

As it did with the NextView program, NGA is expected to pay a portion of the development of the next generation commercial satellite, the source said.

Under the NextView contract, NGA paid approximately $500 million for half the cost of the development of GeoEye-1 as well as an 18-month commitment to buy imagery produced by the satellite.

NGA also paid approximately $500 million under a similar contract to DigitalGlobe for its WorldView-1 satellite.

Lockheed Martin and GeoEye have a long history having worked together on the world’s first commercial, high-resolution, Earth-imaging satellite, IKONOS. Lockheed Martin Space Systems designed and built IKONOS in 1999.

IKONOS continues to provide 0.82-meter ground resolution imagery to GeoEye’s customers around the globe, according to Lockheed Martin. These map-accurate images are used for applications in national security, environmental monitoring, state and local government, disaster assessment and relief, land management and for many other geospatial applications, the company added.

“GeoEye and Lockheed Martin have had a long and productive partnership since building and launching the first commercial remote sensing satellite,” Joanne Maguire, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said. “Our GeoEye-2 solution will leverage our strong government and commercial satellite system expertise and focus on operational excellence and mission success to provide GeoEye with another world-class, high-performance spacecraft for its customers.”

Lockheed Martin’s GeoEye-2 solution will build on the company’s deep heritage and ability to execute within cost and schedule in this mission area and offer increased agility, resolution and flexibility over IKONOS and GeoEye-1, the company said. This will enable NGA to provide critical geospatial situational awareness and global security information to intelligence analysts, war fighters and decision makers. Commercial users will also benefit from access to GeoEye-2’s map-accurate color imagery.

General Dynamics [GD] partnered with GeoEye on GeoEye-1, and was responsible for the mission-system engineering, design and manufacture of the spacecraft; procurement and integration of the electro-optical assembly (camera); environmental testing of the integrated satellite, plus launch processing support, and ground- based command and control systems. The company conducted on-orbit checkout, according to General Dynamics

Recently, Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB] agreed to acquire General Dynamics’ spacecraft development and manufacturing business for $55 million.