As the US Commercial Remote Sensing industry matures and expands, the issue of identifying the value chain for imagery to potential customers in different market segments from agriculture to emergency planning emerges. Despite the correlations between commercial satellite imagery and aerial imagery traditional focus has been on the competition of the two data sets. Industry experts & leaders gathered recently at the U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Industry forum, in Washington D.C. to converge on these emerging issues. Complementing the discussions on the future of commercial remote sensing, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) exhibited to introduce the Director’s Innovative Initiative (DII) program. The DII Program .) provides a risk tolerant environment to invest in cutting edge technologies and high payoff concepts relevant to the NRO’s mission. It fosters innovation and provides seed funding to push the boundaries of technology to dramatically improve our nation’s satellite reconnaissance capabilities. The NRO is looking for any ideas that have significant mission impact, significant innovation and are unlikely to be developed by another organization.
Attendees included decision makers from: USGS; NIMA; US Air Force; Space Imaging; Northrop Grumman Corporation; NOAA; RAND Corporation; Digital Globe; Orbimage; United States Senate; Lockheed Martin Space Systems; GeoVantage, Inc.; The Aerospace Corporation; Sanborn; PCI Geomatics; GEOSYS, Inc.; Ball Aerospace; Flight Landata; GlobeXplorer; HAS Images, Inc.; Mitretek Systems; SenSyTech; Imaging Group; Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems; Satellite Weekly; Mellon HBV; Credit Suisse First Boston; The Aerospace Corporation; and Research Systems, Inc.
