Satellite-image suppliers poised for future growth.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.

Commercial providers of satellite imagery expect their sales to the U.S. government will grow in the years ahead. A July memo by the head of Central Intelligence, directing the National Imagery and Mapping Agency to increase its purchases of commercial satellite pictures, was an encouraging sign that U.S. government is interested in the financial health of the industry, said top executives interviewed by National Defense.

CIA chief George Tenet wrote to the director of NIMA, requesting that the agency rely on commercial imagery for government mapping projects. Tenet said that his goal was "to stimulate, as quickly as possible, and maintain, for the foreseeable future, a robust U.S. commercial space imagery industry."

NIMA still will use government satellite imagery for specific project but only "under exceptional circumstance," Tenet said.

NIMA's spokesman, Dave Burpee, said that his agency has had a long and fruitful relationship with the commercial remote-sensing industry. "We're always been involved to the maximum extent possible with the commercial satellite industry. It is absolutely essential to NIMA and what we do," he said.

"We were pleased to get Mr. Tenet's letter, because it helps us to make the case for additional funding," Burpee said. "Our problems has always been authorized funding, and now it appears that that will be resolved."

The commercial satellite imagery business has become important to the federal government in the last several years, because it provides accurate data that are less expensive, and available on short notice. "Technically, commercial satellite imagery has been a strategic national asset for a long time," said John Copple, chief executive officer of Space Imaging, one of two companies that currently dominate the U.S. commercial satellite marketplace. The other company is Digital Globe. Both are based in Colorado.

James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the relationship between the government and the commercial satellite industry can be compared to the airline industry's relationship with the government in the 1930s. "The industry is at an early stage, with both real security implications and strong commercial potential," he said. The government, in the 1930s, gave the airlines mail-delivery contracts, and it kept them in business until the commercial market took off, Lewis said.

Burpee agreed that the commercial satellite industry is a strategic...