The National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which specializes in producing and analyzing imagery for the US intelligence agencies, is still negotiating details of the contract but has put up several million dollars in seed money for development of the Longmont, Colorado company's NextView satellites, a NIMA spokesman said.

To meet NIMA's specification, the satellites must be capable of providing imagery of up to 0.5 meter resolution, or twice as fine as the one meter resolution provided by its closest US competitor Space Imaging, LLC.

"It will give us a few inches more clarity," said Dave Burpee, a NIMA spokesman. "Whereas before we might have been able to see a coffee table, now maybe we can see an end table."

Under the contract, DigitalGlobe will not provide NIMA imagery until 2006 when it launches its next satellite. Its QuickBird satellite, launched in 2001, can produce imagery with a resolution of 0.62 mters. The NIMA contract runs through the end of fiscal 2008.

The deal gives NIMA "greater access and priority and more advanced capability and capacity than any other previous commercial imagery contract," the agency said.

Burpee said it also would help ensure that there is no gap in commercial imagery coverage.

"Our national technical means are still our primary source. But certainly this is a capability that will let us meet many, many of our missions, both the mapping and others," he said.

"One big advantage of this is that it's not classified. So we can take pictures and immediately share them with other non-governmental organizations. We don't have any of the classification restrictions involved with our national satellites," he said.

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