DENVER ― The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has awarded three new contracts to providers of commercial satellite data, a senior spy satellite agency official said today.
Pete Muend, the head of NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office, told the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s annual GEOINT Symposium here that latest awards under the agency’s Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) contract vehicle have gone to:
- Canadian startup Earth Daily, to provide electro-optical imagery;
- ICEYE, to provide radio frequency geo-location data; and
- Indian startup Pixxel, to provide hyperspectral imagery.
Both Earth Daily and Pixxel are brand new providers, whereas ICEYE has a previous NRO contract to provide synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery.
“I’m really eager to see where that goes as they kind of march through that process — first more modeling and simulation, and then as they actually have on-orbit capability, being able to really acquire some of that on-orbit data to really provide that value, and have that grow over time,” Muend said.
NRO launched the new CSO contract vehicle with a request for proposals last July and made the first three awards in February.
The CSO process differs from the spysat agency’s previous small-dollar, short-term contracts under the Strategic Commercial Enhancement Broad Area Announcement program, Muend explained, allowing longer contract terms. It also allows companies to offer unsolicited proposals across all phenomenologies for gathering intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data from space: electro-optical, SAR, hyperspectral, RF geolocation and LIDAR.
Muend also touched on NRO’s cooperation with the US Space Force with regard to acquisition of commercial ISR during his GEOINT presentation, noting that his office strives to provide data that fits the requirements of the service’s Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking or TacSRT program.
As first reported by Breaking Defense, the two sides last spring signed an agreement on how they will share acquisition authority for, and access to, imagery and other ISR data.
Muend said that while that is going swimmingly for current acquisition efforts, there is still work to be done with regard to some of the emerging commercial capabilities.
“I think there’s probably even a little bit more work to do to make sure that when we buy data, it seamlessly fits into that those that buy those more analytic products, be it on the IC side within [the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency] and maybe our Space Force colleagues at Tac-SRT, just to make sure that that’s as seamless as possible,” he said.
For example, Muend suggested that NRO could serve as source of early vetting of any commercial companies stepping up to provide the Space Force with satellite tracking of aircraft. The Space Force in April awarded its first nine contracts for provision of what is know as airborne moving target indication (AMTI), but did not disclose the names of the winning companies nor the value of the awards.
“If a commercial company has a compelling AMTI capability, we’ll certainly be one of the first ones in line to demonstrate that and see if there’s a there there,” Muend said.
