L3Harris Geospatial develops products for the visualization, analysis, and management of geospatial imagery and scientific data. The company develops products such as IDL, ENVI, and Jagwire which are used in a variety of industries including defense and intelligence, environmental, engineering, aerospace,

medical imaging Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to re ...

, and federal and civil governments worldwide.

History

The company's origin can be traced back to 1977 when David Stern was working at the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University o ...

on the Mariner Mars space probes. Stern developed a programming language called Mariner Mars Spectral Editor, which later evolved to IDL, Interactive Data Language, in order to supplement FORTRAN, specifically for data analysis and visualization. As his vision developed, Stern left the university and started working in his attic to improve the programming language. He incorporated Research Systems Inc. (RSI) and released IDL as a proprietary programming language for visualizing data.

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

Goddard Space Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

and

Ball Aerospace Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is an American manufacturer of spacecraft, components and instruments for national defense, civil space and commercial space applications. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ball Corporation ( NYSE: BA ...

were among the company's early customers. In 1994, the software package ENVI was released. Written in IDL, ENVI is the industry standard for image processing and analysis allowing GIS professionals,

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring information about Ear ...

scientists, and image analysts to extract information from geospatial imagery. RSI was acquired by

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2000. Four years later, RSI along with the Remote Sensing Systems division of Eastman Kodak, were sold to

ITT Corporation ITT Inc., formerly ITT Corporation, is an American worldwide manufacturing company based in Stamford, Connecticut. The company produces specialty components for the aerospace, transportation, energy and industrial markets. ITT's three business ...

and were renamed ITT Visual Information Solutions. In 2011, ITT Corporation was divided into three standalone companies, and ITT Visual Information Solutions became part of Exelis Inc. along with ITT Defense and Information Solutions. ITT Visual Information Solutions was renamed again to the current Exelis Visual Information Solutions. Exelis Visual Information Solutions was purchased by Harris Corporation in 2015, becoming a subsidiary known as Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc. In 2019, Harris Corporation merged with L3 Technologies, Inc. and became L3Harris Technologies, Inc.

Products

IDL

IDL (Interactive Data Language) is a

scientific programming language In computer programming, a scientific programming language can refer to two degrees of the same concept. In a wide sense, a scientific programming language is a programming language that is used widely for computational science and computational ...

used in particular areas of science, such as

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

meteorology Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did no ...

, and

ENVI

ENVI is an off-the-shelf software program used to visualize, process and analyze geospatial imagery.

Jagwire

Jagwire is a data ingest, management, image exploitation, and information dissemination tool.

References

{{ITT Corporation ITT Inc. Remote sensing companies GIS software companies Geospatial intelligence organizations