NOAA's Commercial Remote Sensing Advisory Committee to Meet for First Time in Three Years

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing (ACCRES) will meet on Monday for the first time in almost three years.   A notice of the meeting was posted in today’s Federal Register.

According to the ACCRES website, its last meeting was in October 2009.  NOAA renewed its charter in March 2012 and its current chair is Kevin O’Connell, President and CEO of Innovative Analytics and Training. 

In addition to Kevin O’Connell, the ACCRES website lists these other members and their affiliations. 

• Matthew O’Connell, President, CEO and Director, GeoEye
• David Gorney, Vice President, Space Program Operations, The Aerospace Corp.
• Joseph Fuller, President and CEO, Futron Corp.
• Thomas Ingersoll, CEO, Skybox Imaging
• Michael Jones, Chief Technology Officer, Google Earth
• Jeffrey Tarr, President and CEO, DigitalGlobe
• Joanne Gabrynowicz, Director, National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law, University of Mississippi
• Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
• Roberta Lenczowski, President, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
• Benjamin Malphrus, Chair, Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences, Morehead State University
• Michael Triller, GEOINT Systems, North Grumman Corp. Aerospace Systems
• Herbert Satterlee, CEO, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Information Systems, Inc.

The website also lists former GeoEye President Jill Smith as a member, but NOAA acknowledges that is an error.   Jeffrey Tarr replaced Smith as GeoEye president in April 2011 and is a member of ACCRES.

DigitalGlobe and GeoEye announced plans to merge in July 2012 as the Department of Defense (DOD) indicated it would sharply reduce its payments to the companies under the EnhancedView contract.  Both are heavily dependent on government payments through EnhancedView and its predecessor contracts via the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

Companies that want to provide commercial satelite imagery must obtain a license from NOAA first to make certain they are in compliance with various laws and policies put in place over the past 20 years.

ACCRES advises NOAA on its implementation of those laws and policies and is a “forum for the discussion of issues involving the relationship between industry activities and Govrnment policies, programs, and regulatory requirements.”   The Federal Register notice says only that the September 24 meeting includes a presentation on updates of NOAA’s licensing activities and that ACCRES will receive public comments on its activities.  The meeting is in NOAA’s auditorium at 1301 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD from 1:00-4:00 pm ET.