GeoEye, has announced a strategic relationship with Geostellar, an innovative technology company that is transforming the solar energy industry. Under the terms of the agreement, GeoEye will supply high-quality Earth imagery, digital surface models and other mapping data to help Geostellar dramatically expand its service. GeoEye also intends to take a small equity position in the company.

Geostellar has built a breakthrough analytics platform that automatically determines how quickly a given property owner can recoup an investment in solar energy. The company's platform models roof slope, shadows, weather patterns, local utility rates and solar energy subsidies to automate what has historically been a highly manual process.

Geostellar has built solar maps in Washington D.C., Boston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New Jersey, where government agencies have made aerial imagery freely available.

Geostellar needed a strategic partner to help collect and process massive amounts of Earth imagery data to catalog the solar power potential of every commercial and residential property in the United States.

GeoEye will become Geostellar's Earth imagery vendor of choice and apply image processing capabilities developed by GeoEye Analytics to provide the data required to develop solar maps for every key metropolitan market in the United States.

"GeoEye is constantly searching for ways Earth imagery and other forms of geospatial data can be utilized to deliver new levels of insight," said Tony Frazier, senior vice president of Marketing.

"Geostellar is a terrific example of how geospatial analytics can help transform a multi-billion dollar industry. We are excited to combine imagery, expertise and enabling technology to help Geostellar achieve its vision."

"High quality, digital surface models and mapping data provide critical fuel to our engine," said David Levine, founder and CEO of Geostellar.

"Our strategic relationship with GeoEye will help millions of residential and commercial property owners understand how quickly they can generate a return on investment by going solar."

"It is exciting to see Geostellar apply capabilities developed by GeoEye Analytics to support such an innovative use case," said Mark Dumas, GeoEye's vice president of Special Projects and co-founder of SPADAC, now known as GeoEye Analytics.

"It is a great example of how the expertise and enabling technology we developed to support our military customers can be applied to drive commercial growth."