[Satellite TODAY Insider 01-05-12] GeoEye and its Russian partner ScanEx Research and Development Center have been contracted by the Russian government to provide millions of square kilometers of high-resolution satellite imagery to the Russian Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography (Rosreestr), the companies confirmed Jan. 4.

   GeoEye will deliver a significant amount of archive imagery from its GeoEye-1 satellite to ScanEx under the first phase of the contract. GeoEye will then collect new imagery of Russia from GeoEye-1 under the second phase of the contract, which will be completed by the end of 2012, the company said. 

   “GeoEye and ScanEx are working together to give Russia easy access to our timely geospatial information and help their government maintain consistent data layers for land parcels, infrastructure, borders and districts. This project is yet another example of a groundbreaking product designed to advance the Russian Earth-observation market,” GeoEye Senior Vice President of Sales Chris Tully said in a statement.

   Rosreestr’s role in the project will include creating a countrywide base map of land properties in the Russian Federation to administer property rights and data across the Russia’s vast landscape, which covers more than one-ninth of the Earth’s landmass. The base map will have multiple data layers and extensive topographic features. 

   ScanEx Founder and Vice President Olga Gershenzon said the Russian government would host the completed base map on their portal so that federal and regional government agencies and the public can view them via Web services.

   “Currently, there are more than 49 million land parcels in the system and, on average, 12,000 users access the system each day. It’s important we complete this project on deadline and keep the public cadastre map data current. The country needs the best data available. That’s why, to execute this project, we are acquiring significant amounts of GeoEye-1 imagery as the most detailed and accurate imagery existing on the commercial market,” Gershenzon said in a statement.

   Financial details of the contract were not disclosed. GeoEye is one of two U.S. companies that are operating under a 10-year, $7.3 billion contract with the U.S. government to provide imagery to the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. DigitalGlobe was the second winner of the 2009 contract award.