Earth Observation Satellite Co. has signed a marketing agreement with India's Department of Space that will at least double the Lanham-based company's annual revenue.
Under the deal, EOSAT will sell images created by Indian satellites to business and government customers around the world.
"It's the biggest contract in the history of the company," said Arturo Silvestrini, president and chief executive of the Prince George's County company.
The agreement is expected to generate between $75 million and $100 million in annual revenues for EOSAT by 1997. The company declines to reveal its current revenues, but two years ago it said it had sales of about $30 million.
It also is expected to boost the company's employment. Mr. Silvestrini said that if things go as planned, the company will hire 20 to 100 workers over the next couple of years. It currently employs 127 people, all but 17 at its Lanham office.
EOSAT, a joint venture partnership of Martin Marietta Corp. and Hughes Aircraft Co., was formed in 1984 as part of the Reagan administration efforts to turn over some government services to private industry.
India intends to launch eight imaging satellites over the next 10 years, giving it more capacity to study the Earth's surface than any other nation. The first of these launches is scheduled for August.
EOSAT collects satellite images, which resemble photographs, and sells them to government and business. The data are used for a variety of purposes, including petroleum and mineral exploration, urban and transportation planning, map making, flood control and crop estimates.
Mr. Silvestrini said India uses satellite information to monitor its water resources and crop production. But the satellites, which will have the capability of providing a photo image of a structure the size of a single-family house or 30-foot sailboat, continue to operate after they pass over India.
It is the images that the satellites will be collecting as they scan the entire globe every four or five days that EOSAT will be marketing to customers around the world. The Indian government will be paid a royalty from EOSAT's sales.
EOSAT already has an agreement with India to market data from its two imaging satellites now in orbit.
It also sells images created by the Landsat 5 satellite owned by the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
To lesson its dependence on any single satellite, EOSAT also has agreements with the European Space Agency, Japan and Russia to market data from their satellites.