Google-focused satellite enters orbit
The GeoEye-1 satellite that launched into orbit Saturday is on a mission from Google.
Well, not just Google. The GeoEye-1 is part of the NextView program of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a dot-mil organization that, odd as it may seem, wants access to commercial satellite imagery to support its national security mission. GeoEye, the company, won its $500 million NextView contract four years ago.
Google's rocket-borne logo.
(Credit: GeoEye/ULA)But the search titan does have the exclusive rights among online mapping sites to the GeoEye-1 images, which it will use in its Google Earth and Google Maps offerings. It even got its corporate logo emblazoned on the launch rocket, right below Boeing's.
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were on hand at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California for Saturday morning's launch, according to the Reuters news agency.
GeoEye said Saturday afternoon that the satellite had separated from the second stage of the Delta II rocket and was initializing its onboard systems.
The GeoEye-1 will zip around the Earth at about 4.5 miles per second, taking both color and black-and-white images from a distance of 423 miles. Its camera can distinguish objects on the ground as small as 16 inches in size, according to GeoEye. Because of U.S. licensing restrictions, Google's resolutions won't be quite that sharp.
High-resolution color images are expected later in the fall.
A GeoEye-2 satellite is scheduled for launch in 2011.
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon. 
Having their names on a spy satelite is so fitting for a company that continues to flaunt the line between good and evil.
And what is this about forming an OpenSocial Foundation to woo friends? What friends? Who would want to be friends with the next hegemonic tech giant after that other giant, Microsoft. I'm no Microsoftie, and I'm no Googler either.
Google?, yuck.
Good luck with that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Ops
The military buying exclusive images from a private company is one thing, but a company buying exclusive from the government when even one taxpayer dollar is involved it weird.
Even if Geoeye was given some commercial incentives in the contract to cut overall cost of Rand D the deal sounds a little to sweet for Google. Maybe there is a time frame of exclusivity and then they go public???
The military buying exclusive images from a private company is one thing, but a company buying exclusive from the government when even one taxpayer dollar is involved it weird.
Even if Geoeye was given some commercial incentives in the contract to cut overall cost of Rand D the deal sounds a little to sweet for Google. Maybe there is a time frame of exclusivity and then they go public???
Good luck with your privacy.
What do you have to hide? It's just fear itself you have to be concerned about getting rid of. Of course the world is getting worse but will get better with supernatural intervention. Whose your protector? Jesus or your own will and self which is always on the defensive. You will always get yourself down. Try reading John in the Bible for escaping self and the enemy who is trying to invade your private lives!
fav site:
activated.org
eric
Conspiracy theorists unite!
I can smell the paranoia from here... Thorazine anyone? :o)
what privacy 'come on' there is no such a thing .... the minute you were born you already lost your privacy ...
after mapping earth google will be moving to mapping our DNA ... just wait
- by hassan_bin_sober March 19, 2009 12:32 PM PDT
- Glad to see the profanity police are on the CNET job!
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