Update on the GeoEye-1 Antenna Issue

An irregularity with the antenna, detected on Dec 11 caused the company to suspend imagery collection for a time. The official statement of the problem: "The irregularity appears to limit the range of movement of GeoEye-1's downlink antenna, which may in turn affect GeoEye-1's ability to image and downlink simultaneously."

While some customers who get direct downlinks the company confirmed there would be no impact on imagery delivery to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and GeoEye regional affiliates.

According to GeoEye, "As of today, the GeoEye-1 wide band antennae irregularity is not affecting commercial operations. Imagery collections are back to almost 100% (collections were only affected due to shut down for testing) and imagery quality and accuracy are 100% up to par and never were affected.

Downlink capabilities are only affecting some regional affiliates, but in terms of delivery to our largest government customer and most of our commercial partners and customers, there is no affect. We may see some extension of a very few deadlines for collection (for those with due dates at the end of December or January) as we bring the bird back to normal operations, but that should be very minimal. We anticipate downlink to be back to normal shortly and in the meantime, work arounds are in place while the irregularity team deals with a complete fix for the antennae irregularity."