GeoEye has announced that it has completed an expansion, nearly doubling the production space, of its St. Louis, Missouri advanced production facility.

A ceremony to mark the opening of the new space took place on April 27, 2009 and included a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by GeoEye's Chief Operating Officer, Vice Presidents of engineering and product engineering and many St. Louis employees.

GeoEye's St. Louis facility employs 83 highly skilled professionals - many with advanced degrees in geospatial engineering, mathematics and geography. There are a dozen job openings to support the increased workloads.

St. Louis employees generate advanced image processing products, engineering analysis and related services for the U.S. Government and other commercial customers. It can produce satellite imagery products from multiple sources including those acquired by U.S. Government satellites, GeoEye's GeoEye-1 and IKONOS satellites, and imaging satellites operated by competitors in the U.S. and overseas.

Bill Schuster, GeoEye's chief operating officer, commented, "Our St. Louis facility provides us with a unique ability to provide our customers with the information they need. These days, what matters is not only collecting pixels, but what you do with them. GeoEye believes that we're the only operator of high-resolution imagery satellites that also operates a source-agnostic production facility that can assimilate imagery from any source to generate the sophisticated information products required by our customers."

GeoEye is also expanding its production facility that supports U.S. Government customers within its Thornton, Colorado office near Denver, Colo. Together, both regional facility upgrades represent a 50 percent increase in services' production capacity.