GeoEye (GEOY) said yesterday its shareholders approved the proposal to combine with DigitalGlobe [DGI].

At a special meeting of GeoEye shareholders yesterday, 98.3-percent of the shares voting at the meeting voted in favor of the merger proposal, representing approximately 77.2 percent of GeoEye’s total outstanding shares of common stock as of yesterday.

DigitalGlobe in July agreed to acquire GeoEye in a stock and cash deal valued at $900 million. GeoEye is DigitalGlobe’s primary United States-based competitor in the satellite earth imagery and geospatial analysis market. International customers include the Astrium unit of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (Defense Daily, July 24).

The merger was set in motion after the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) told GeoEye in June it would not exercise the full year EnhancedView Service Level Agreement option for this contract year. EnhancedView is a program to provide NGA with satellite imagery (Defense Daily, June 26).