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Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? As always, we hope you had a restful weekend, and had time to process the big news from Friday: GeoEye’s offer to acquire DigitalGlobe. Our editorial staff has heard from many people in the GEOINT community and “wow” seems to be the overall response. So, we have decided to include some follow on news from that announcement, as well as our usual round up of GEOINT stories from the around the spectrum, in today’s MMNKO post. Happy Monday.

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While the idea of GEOINT centers around tracking assets on the ground from the skies, there is a new DIY movement where amateur astrophotographers are doing the opposite: tracking satellites as the orbit the globe. And, yes, this does include the tracking of spy satellites. These DIYers recently recorded the NRO’s Lacrosse 5 satellite doing a what Boing Boing calls a “disappearance trick,” where the satellite periodically vanishes for several seconds.

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In an effort to tackle the challenge of providing actionable intelligence to the warfighter quicker, the U.S. Air Force launched a new battlefield reconnaissance satellite last night from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va. The satellite is the first in the Department of Defense’s Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) office program, which aims to put a number of small spy satellites into orbit with the intention of providing enhanced space operations to help warfighters. Be sure to check out the video of the launch in this post.

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Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? As we make our way into the summer season, it is easy to get distracted and think about that upcoming vacation to the beach. But, as we all know the reason we can have vacations is because we work so hard and bring a level of dedication that allows us to prosper and propel the community into unprecedented territory. So, before you start thinking about that vacation, let’s focus on the tasks at hand and utilize all the tools you need to be successful — for example today’s MMNKO post. So, as we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on.

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It’s no secret that warfare has changed tremendously over the past decade. We are more reliant upon small bands of American soldiers who track down an elusive enemy in very precarious and isolated terrain, making our missions all the more challenging. Naturally, GEOINT plays a key role in helping the warfighter target and find the enemy. But as this new nature of warfare continues, the U.S. Army is adapting its use of spy satellites to better help the warfighter and reduce the danger associated with our efforts in remote areas of Afghanistan (as an example). The Army is aggressively moving towards launch swarms of tiny, inexpensive spy satellites – called nanosatellites — which will provide all the key intelligence data that warfighters need on the ground.

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Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? As always, we hope you had a restful weekend and are ready to dive backing into your professional lives. For this morning’s MMNKO (still love that acronym) post, we have eclectic/mixed-bag of stories — from Microsoft launching a Google Street View rival to Brazilian police using “RoboCop style” sunglasses to detect criminals — for you to peruse as you gear up for the work week. So, as we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on. Happy Monday!

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As our faithful readers know, we like to do a mid-week news summary, especially when things are blowing up in the news media! Well, that may be an exaggeration, though there is plenty happening today. We have the NGA Tech Showcase East going on, and the International LiDAR Mapping Forum is happening in New Orleans (one of our favorite places) right now. And, well, there’s plenty of other key news — like the CIA fully embracing social media and the NGA looking for IT support. To achieve true enlightenment when it comes to GEOINT news, please read on…again, perhaps another exaggeration. But trust us, there’s some good stuff in this post. Happy Wednesday!

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WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. Everywhere we turn it’s still all about WikiLeaks. Yes, the State Department is still dealing with the fall out of Julian Assange’s late-November dump of thousands of diplomatic cables. While most of these documents contained State Department-related issues, one caught our attention (well, via The Huffington Post that is). It seems that Germany’s aerospace center was allegedly working with the U.S. on a $270 million high-tech secret spy program that involved the development of a high-resolution optical satellite. Germany recently denied that this GEOINT-related program was for intelligence gathering purposes, but was for purely scientific and security uses.

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Energy efficiency and innovation are the name of the game when it comes to a new new solar powered drone being developing for the Pentagon by Boeing. Dubbed the SolarEagle, this innovative drone will be capable of flying for five straight years at 60,000 feet. According to the LA Times, Boeing recently announced it had won the $89-million contract with DARPA to develop a prototype of the SolarEagle that can demonstrate it can stay aloft for 30 days by 2014. According to DARPA, the program will “enable a re-taskable, persistent pseudo-satellite capability in an aircraft package. The technology combines the key benefits of an aircraft (flexibility & responsiveness, sensor resolution, reduced transmit/receive power, affordable deployment) with the benefits of a satellite (on- station persistence, no logistics tail, zero emissions, energy independence, minimal fleet size, absence of in-country footprint).” Very interesting stuff. Is this the future of GEOINT? Check out more here.

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We all know that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has shied away from opening their doors to the media. In fact, it is a place where very few cameras ever go. Until now that is. Fox 5 in Washington DC was able to gain access into the NRO and did, what we think, is a fine job in showcasing the NRO. Hey, they even got an interview with Bruce Carlson, NRO Director. With all the changes happening at the NRO — the Sept 20 launch of a security satellite and the new charter — it is no wonder the NRO has invested some of its resources into public relations. And be sure to check out Bruce Carlson speak at GEOINT 2010 and if you missed GEOINT 2009, you can see last year’s speech here. We have the full video segment from Fox 5 embedded in this post. We hope you check it out.

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