got geoint?

Happy Monday! Welcome once again to our Monday Morning News Kick Off post. As always, we hope you all had nice, restful weekends filled with autumn fun and professional football watching. Well, here we are – back at the grind. For many on Monday morning, they need to gumption and strength and get back into the car, commute to the office and dedicate 5 days to working and carving out a living. Although its may not be as much fun as being a part of Vinnie Chase’s “Entourage” — what is really? — working in the GEOINT sector is challenging, exciting and instills a significant amount of pride. It often does not feel like a Monday morning to us. Does it feel that way with you all? Anyhow, plenty of news to highlight to start the week below. Enjoy.

Spy Satellites Find Uranium Enrichment Sites in Iran
Once Iran revealed the existence of its first secret uranium enrichment site at Natanz seven years ago, U.S. intelligence agencies realized that it would not be the last attempt by Iran to illicitly produce fuel for powering a nuclear war head. Turns out they were right, but using spy satellite imagery, intelligence agencies pinpointed a second site hidden inside a mountain near Qom, a Shi’ite holy city and a religious nerve center of the Iranian regime, according to U.S. officials. The satellites picked up the the telltale digging of underground facilities. Read more about the this story here.

GOP Senators Pull Out of Inquiry Into CIA Program
Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Friday that they will no longer participate in an investigation into the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, arguing that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s decision to reexamine allegations of detainee abuse by the CIA would hobble any inquiry. Read more here.

Where is Where.gov?
USGIF board member Chris Tucker always provides the most insightful articles and commentary. You all may recall his FCW Op-Ed on U.S. national security in a digital age. Well, once again, he put pen to paper and the result is, as always, illuminating. In this piece, he calls to task Where.gov and makes the case that the basic tenets of government is knowing where “stuff” is. Read the entire Op-Ed here.

India Launches Seven Satellites
India has launched seven satellites from a single rocket, demonstrating its growing skills in multi-satellite launches. The success comes nearly a month after India had to end its inaugural Moon mission early. Within a space of 20 minutes, an Indian rocket placed one big satellite and six small ones into space from the Sriharikota space center in eastern India. The big remote-sensing satellite will map fishing zones around India, measure ocean surfaces and wind speeds and track monsoons and cyclones. The six small satellites belong to other countries – four to Germany, one to Switzerland and one to Turkey. Read more here.

DigitalGlobe’s 3rd Sat To Gain WorldViews On October 8th
DigitalGlobe has received October 8, 2009, as the new scheduled launch date for its WorldView-2 high-resolution, remote-sensing satellite. WorldView-2 will launch on a Boeing Delta II launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Upon launch, WorldView-2 will join DigitalGlobe’s two other high-resolution satellites in orbit, QuickBird and WorldView-1. WorldView-2 is the first commercial high-resolution satellite with eight-band multispectral imagery collection capabilities. DigitalGlobe expects images and products from WorldView-2 to be commercially available approximately 90 days after a successful launch. Read more here.

Happy Monday!

Tags: Chris Tucker, CIA investigation, DigitalGlobe, Eric Holder investigation of CIA, GEOINT, got geoint?, India, India satellites, United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, USGIF, Where.gov