View source for EarthSat

{{short description|American Aerospace company}}
{{Notability|companies|date=March 2020}}
{{Infobox company
| name = Earth Satellite Corporation
| trade_name = EarthSat
| founded = {{start date and age|1969}} in [[Washington, D.C.]],
| hq_location_city = [[Rockville, Maryland]]
| hq_location_country = United States
| defunct = {{end date and age|2017}}
| fate = Merged into Digital Globe to form [[Radiant Solutions]]
| parent = [[MacDonald Dettwiler|MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.]] (2001-2017)
}}
'''Earth Satellite Corporation''' (EarthSat), an American company, was a pioneer in the commercial use of [[Earth observation satellite]]s. Founded in 1969, EarthSat was first headquartered in [[Washington, D.C.]], and later moved its offices to [[Bethesda, Maryland]], and finally to [[Rockville, Maryland]], in the late 1980s. In 2001, EarthSat was acquired by [[MacDonald Dettwiler|MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.]] (MDA) of Vancouver, [[British Columbia]]. In August 2005, EarthSat was incorporated as MDA Federal Inc., the U.S. operation of MDA Geospatial Services.{{Citation needed|date=January 2012}}
EarthSat pioneered the use of [[remote sensing]] for petroleum, mineral and groundwater exploration. It later expanded into satellite and aerial [[image processing]], weather services and [[geographic information system]]s. EarthSat products were derived from NASA's [[Landsat program]], Canada's [[RADARSAT-1]] and an entire [[list of Earth observation satellites]].
In August 1998, [[NASA]] contracted EarthSat to produce Landsat GeoCover - a positionally accurate orthorectified Landsat Thematic Mapper and Multispectral Scanner imagery covering the majority of the Earth's land mass. The contract was part of the NASA Scientific Data Purchase which was administrated through NASA's [[John C. Stennis Space Center]]. Geocover 2000 is one of the global satellite image products used in [[NASA World Wind]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2012}}
GeoCover was later enhanced to EarthSat NaturalVue, a natural color [[Landsat 7]] derived circa year 2000, orthorectified, mosaicked and color balanced digital image dataset covering the entire land area of the Earth except for the high latitude polar regions.{{Citation needed|date=January 2012}}
In 2017, MDA-US [http://investor.maxar.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2017/MDA-Completes-Acquisition-of-DigitalGlobe-Creates-Industry-Leader-in-Satellite-Systems-Earth-Imagery-Geospatial-Solutions-and-Analytics/default.aspx merged] with Digital Globe to form [[Radiant Solutions]] which is a subsidiary of [[Maxar Technologies]] which was the former parent MDA company out of Canada.
==References==
{{Reflist}}
== External links ==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/19971222025758/http://earthsat.com/ EarthSat] Renamed [https://web.archive.org/web/20060104185902/http://www.mdafederal.com/press/news_item.mdarenaming MDA Federal Inc]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060115040721/http://www.mdafederal.com/ MDA Federal Inc]
[[Category:Aerospace companies of the United States]]
[[Category:Remote sensing companies]]
[[Category:Technology companies established in 1969]]
[[Category:1969 establishments in the United States]]