Lockheed Martin division to build GeoEye2

Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. will engineer and build the next satellite for GeoEye Inc., a remote imaging company.

The Littleton-based division of defense and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp. won the contract to build GeoEye2, a high-resolution orbiter, for Dulles, Va.-based GeoEye.

Contract terms weren’t disclosed.

GeoEye collects and sells satellite imagery for mapping, environmental monitoring, national security and other purposes. The company employs more than 500 people, about 130 of whom work in Thornton, where it processes images taken by satellites and monitors the company’s older orbiters.

Its biggest competitor is Longmont-based DigitalGlobe.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems built GeoEye’s Ikonos satellite, which was the first successful commercial remote sensing satellite. Ikonos has flown for almost 10 years.

Work on GeoEye-2 will be handled primarily at Lockheed Martin Space Systems’s campus in Sunnyvale, Calif.

By Greg Avery, the Denver Business Journal