Imperial Cartography Center

The Imperial Cartography Center is a public institute in the United Empire of Earth founded in 2546. It is a branch of the Government Cartography Agency (GCA), or its successor and possibly a sub-agency of the Department of Transportation & Navigation.

The ICC manages Deep Space Scanning & AstroGraphical Stations that search for jump points and a Stellar Surveyors unit that assesses newly discovered systems.

Other responsibilites include the tracking of stellar objects and updating of the ARK Starmap.

History
The ICC is an offspring of the Government Cartography Agency which was formed in 2531. Before their founding, stellar data and information were charted and provided by private cartography corporations. Stellar information was censored in favour of corporate interests, free access to stellar data was only available with a delay of years, or occluded by legal disputes (i.e. about the correct discovery date of Nemo which was claimed by two corporations.)

This finally changed after the Pallas incident in which Pallas III was terraformed by Gaia Planet Services shortly after the discovery of the system which lead to a violent first contact and confrontation with the Xi'an.

With the inthronisation of Ivar Messer the focus of the now renamed organisation shifted to providing access to the public while controlling (and censoring) the entire flow of information. All private mapping orgs were nationalized.

Messer invested large sums of credits into the ICC while supporting companies sympathetic to the regime with orders for top scanning equipment and construction contracts. The ICC also provided scans for the military on UEEs contested periphery, the Vanduul front as well as the Perry Line.

Although the ICC was deeply rooted in the Messer apparatus, it retained political autonomy. It refused to remove the information about the jump points leading to Orion after the fall of the system in 2715. Its former director Loretta De Biasio claimed it would be more dangerous if the public doesn't know which systems are connected to Orion. (Samuel) Messer VIII prepared to strike the ICC with retaliatory measures for its disobedience but was assassinated in the same year.

The organization and even their name survived the end of the regime.