Orbit Logic Awarded Collection Planning Component for DigitalGlobe Ground System
GREENBELT, MD, (April 4, 2006) -- Orbit Logic announced today that it has been awarded a contract to upgrade the Collection Planning Component (CPC) for DigitalGlobe, one of two companies awarded a NextView contract by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). In preparation for expanded QuickBird and WorldView constellation operations, DigitalGlobe is upgrading its current collection planning system. With the launch of the WorldView I and WorldView II satellites, DigitalGlobe’s collection capacity will increase by a factor of ten. Orbit Logic offers an existing, industry-standard commercial product that can be readily adapted and enhanced to meet DigitalGlobe's needs for increased mission performance with reduced planning timelines and lower life cycle costs. This award represents the second time in the last year that Orbit Logic has been chosen to supply collection planning capabilities by a NextView program vendor.
CPC will meet the challenge of optimizing the value of collected imagery within a large solution space under extremely tight planning timelines. CPC will achieve this by integrating high-fidelity QuickBird and WorldView models with Orbit Logic’s exclusive planning algorithms and comprehensive spacecraft constraint checking functions. The output of each CPC processing run will be a planned activity schedule which has imagery collections optimized within spacecraft capabilities to meet DigitalGlobe’s business goals. To help streamline operations, CPC provides a lights-out automation mode; by managing the division of computational loads between all available workstations, planning sessions are automatically de-conflicted. An innovative clustered-computing architecture provides scalable performance for single or multiple satellites and drastically reduces the time required to generate an optimized plan. A manual planning option is also provided along with extensive configurability to ensure continuing system relevance without software code changes.
“The award of DigitalGlobe’s Collection Planning Component truly cements Orbit Logic as the provider-of-choice for collection planning systems,”
said Alex Herz, president of Orbit Logic. “Our solutions for collection planning and STK/Scheduler for general mission scheduling and optimization address an ever wider variety of planning challenges for our customers.”
“When DigitalGlobe chose to upgrade the collection planning component of our existing system we felt like Orbit Logic provided the best solution on the market,”
said Walter Scott, chief technical officer of DigitalGlobe. “When reviewing Orbit Logic we were impressed by the capabilities of their product, particularly relative to planning automation, and we clearly see the life cycle cost advantages of utilizing an industry-standard, commercial component.”
Longmont, Colo-based DigitalGlobe (www.digitalglobe.com) is a leader in the global commercial Earth imagery and geospatial information market. The company’s technical capabilities and commitment to customer service, extensive business partner network and open systems philosophy make DigitalGlobe a preferred supplier of imagery products to government and commercial markets. DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite is the world’s highest resolution commercial imaging system. The company’s next-generation WorldView I is scheduled to launch in mid-2007, and WorldView II is anticipated to launch in 2008, pending finalization of customer contracts. The company’s updated and growing ImageLibrary contains over one hundred million square kilometers of global imagery for countless mapping and planning needs.
Orbit Logic is a world leader in mission planning and scheduling. The company is the developer of STK/Scheduler, the industry-leading satellite system scheduling and resource optimization software product. Orbit Logic also develops collection planning solutions for high resolution imagery satellite systems that maximize the value of captured imagery. Orbit Logic’s cost-effective and scalable products and solutions quickly integrate into any operations environment. These operationally proven software systems optimize operations scheduling, resource usage, and target selection for customers ranging from NASA and the Air Force to major contractors and satellite imagery providers.