Washington DC - In 1992 ABC news aired a satellite image of the Pentagon that had been sold to them by the Russian Space Agency. That got the interest of the American government and suddenly they realized that satellite photos weren't just for spies anymore.

Since that initial public sale in 1992, the Russian Space Agency has become one of the biggest sellers of satellite imagery in the World today. Only France holds a bigger piece of what is estimated to be the 700 million dollar a year business of selling photos from space.

Serge Grobosi was the first Russian Space Agency Chairman to approve selling satellite photos to the public

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Space Agency found themselves without funding and branching out into the free enterprise market was first discussed. In 1991 then chairman, Serge Grobosi, approved the sell of photos to the public. At that time, several thousand images from the Almaz satellite, which had been launched in 1991, were digitized and made available. Ads for the service was put in several technical magazines and a government news release was issued.

By 1993, Sovinformsputnik, the non-military arm of the Russian Space Agency was selling their photos in the United States through the American firm, Aeromapping Inc.

"We sell in excess of 50,000 photos a year," states Alexi Langa, President of Aeromapping. "Not just in the states but all over the world. Actually our biggest consumer is Latin America where a lack of detailed mapping causes a lot of land disputes to pop up. For $55 any farmer in Brazil or Chile can get an 8 by 10 color photograph of up to 10 kilometers of their land. Our current resolution of 5 meters allows for a clear decision by courts on who owns what."

Langa admits that sales in America are usually for much different reasons.

"Our biggest seller in America is of the US government military base in Nevada known as Area 51. Since the US government owns all the land around it and commercial airliners are forbidden to fly over it, the only way to see what is there is by buying a photo from us. We sell around a 1,000 of those a year."

Surprisingly some of the biggest customers for Russian satellite imagery are US state agencies.

"We regularly sell photos to the Arizona Department of Water Resources so they can see if farmers are using more water than they are reporting. We also just got an order from the Georgia Department of Revenue who wants us to photograph the entire state for evidence of possible illegal timber cutting. They use to get their imagery through NASA but we underbid them this year."

sources

-phone interview of Alexi Langa, February 17th, 1998

-phone interview with Russian Embassy Consulate Stanlasky Obernov, February 16th, 1998

-"Dual Use Aspects of Commercial High-Resolution Imaging Satellites" no 37, 1998, Gerald Steinberg, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies

photo courtesy of the Russian Consulate Office