Orders for tsunami images flood firms

DENVER -- Two Colorado satellite imaging companies are busy this week during a normally slow holiday period after being inundated with requests for photos of the areas in south Asia devastated by tsunamis.

Space Imaging Inc. of Thornton and DigitalGlobe of Longmont captured shots of the coastline of Sri Lanka and other areas hit hard by crashing waves.

In one DigitalGlobe image of Kalutara, Sri Lanka, only the tops of trees and rooftops can be seen as huge waves swirl offshore and waters flood several blocks of homes inland.

On Sunday a 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the northern coast of Indonesia set off tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal that have so far killed tens of thousands of people in 12 nations, including Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.

Now the Colorado companies are trying to fill requests from government and global aid organizations looking for aerial views of affected areas -- both before and after the tsunamis hit -- to help in their relief efforts.

"Every pass we take at Southeast Asia, which happens once a day at about 10:30 in the morning, we're taking large strips of images," said Space Imaging spokesman Gary Napier.

For Space Imaging's Ikonos satellite, that means taking images of 10,000 square kilometers, or 6,213 square miles, in a single pass, he said. Those are far bigger strips than the company normally takes for customer requests.

Typically, Space Imaging schedules only a skeleton production crew over the holidays but has had to bring more people in to field the large number of requests.

"Right now we're managing all the customer requests and scheduling and prioritizing image collections over certain areas," Napier said.

A spokesman for DigitalGlobe couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.

The companies have gotten orders from the U.S. government, the United Nations, foreign governments, global aid organizations and media outlets.

Both companies see big jumps in orders during times of natural disaster or war.

The breadth of images Space Imaging is shooting now in Asia is about equivalent to what the company shot for the U.S. government during a large mapping mission at the beginning of the Iraq war, Napier said.

Lockheed Martin Inc. and Raytheon Co. are each 50 percent joint owners of Space Imaging. DigitalGlobe often works with Ball Aerospace Technologies Corp., a division of Ball Corp., Boeing Corp. and other large companies on satellite projects.

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