GeoEye

GeoEye Inc. (NASDAQ: GEOY) (formerly Orbital Imaging Corporation or ORBIMAGE) is a commercial satellite imagery company based in Dulles, Virginia that is the world's largest space imaging corporation. The company was founded in 1992 as a division of Orbital Sciences Corporation in the wake of the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act which permitted private companies to enter the satellite imaging business. The division was spun off in 1997. It cha... more

GeoEye Inc. (NASDAQ: GEOY) (formerly Orbital Imaging Corporation or ORBIMAGE) is a commercial satellite imagery company based in Dulles, Virginia that is the world's largest space imaging corporation. The company was founded in 1992 as a division of Orbital Sciences Corporation in the wake of the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act which permitted private companies to enter the satellite imaging business. The division was spun off in 1997. It changed its name to GeoEye in 2006 after acquiring Denver, Colorado-based Space Imaging for $58 million. Space Imaging was founded and controlled by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Its principal asset was the IKONOS satellite. Although ORBIMAGE's first chairman was Orbital chairman David W. Thompson, and Orbital at the time owned more than 60 percent of the stock, it no longer has a substantial interest in the new company. GeoEye provides 253 million square kilometers of satellite map images to Microsoft and Yahoo! search engines. Google has... less