The National Reconnaissance Office has announced three new contracts to purchase more commercial imagery for the Intelligence Community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NRO awarded contracts May 31 to BlackSky Global, Maxar Technologies and Planet that will allow the agency to study the satellite imagery capabilities of the three companies and determine whether they will meet government requirements. The values of the three contracts were not announced. The NRO announced the deals June 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A key part of the study will be determining the extent to which the NRO \u2014 which is in charge of operating reconnaissance satellites for the government and providing satellite data to the broader intelligence community \u2014 could license and use the data received from the companies. Troy Meink, director of the NRO\u2019s Geospatial Intelligence Directorate, declined to lay out all the agencies that would have access to the commercial data, but he did state that it would be more than just the NRO and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is just the first step. We figure within the next 6-12 months, if all goes well with these initial contracts, we will be awarding procurement contracts,\u201d said Meink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maxar has been providing imagery to the national security community for close to a decade, but this would be the first commercial imagery contracts with the NRO for BlackSky Global and Planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The intelligence organization hasn\u2019t always been in charge of obtaining commercial satellite information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTraditionally, we\u2019ve just supported the national agencies. This is a little bit of a new role for us,\u201d said Meink. \u201cWe are kind of the procurement arm of NGA when it comes to satellites and satellites procurement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2017, the NRO was tasked with buying commercial imagery for the intelligence community. Then, in 2018, the NRO took over the EnhancedView contract from the NGA and awarded an EnhancedView follow on contract to DigitalGlobe, which operates under the Maxar brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe just changed the business model for how we interact with the companies,\u201d Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, NGA\u2019s director, said during a media availability. \u201cWe write the requirements \u2014 they go out and acquire pixels on contract.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sharp said the arrangement was working well so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want to approach it, really, from making sure customer requirements are being met, and the feedback I\u2019ve had thus far is that we\u2019re still meeting customer requirements,\u201d said Sharp. \u201cRight now I think it\u2019s really working for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meink said that the growing demand for more data is driving the NRO to pursue purchasing more commercial imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe demand signal is growing. That\u2019s one of the reasons why we\u2019re going to be stepping up our procurement of commercial imagery,\u201d said Meink. \u201cWe really needed to look at increasing the number of vendors and getting access to more vendors to meet those capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[Commercial imagery] is going to give us more capability for the dollar than we would have otherwise,\u201d said Meink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The results of the contracted studies will inform the NRO\u2019s 2020 commercial imagery procurements, and Meink said agency leaders will likely look to continue adding commercial capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe next step is going to be looking at other contractors and other phenomenologies, radar and others, that are just in the incubation period in the commercial world,\u201d said Meink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a June 3 press release, Dan Jablonsky, Maxar\u2019s cheif executive, said \u201cthis new study contract with the NRO, coupled with our recent EnhancedView Follow-On agreement, demonstrates that the U.S. Government recognizes the value of procuring commercial satellite imagery both now and into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, Rich Leshner, Planet Federal\u2019s executive vice president of operations said in a June 3 release, \u201cThe NRO is examining how it can expand a partnership with the commercial remote sensing industry in 2020, so it\u2019s looking into new capabilities and keeping an eye on future developments. Planet is constantly iterating and improving, so it\u2019s great that they\u2019re willing to explore these new capabilities with our data and tools.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Reconnaissance Office is dipping its toe into the world of commercial data, awarding three study contracts that will put it on track to start purchasing commercial satellite imagery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":62968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":39,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"10":{"categories":["military-space-report","newsletters","space","daily-news-roundup","industry","the-americas","global"],"primary_category":"military-space-report"}}},"categories":[8,106,29,32,39],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3143],"class_list":["post-30923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c2-comms","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters","category-satellites"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"6NP5GGJN3ZE5PEQSKFYIQC5EMY","arc_canonical_url":"\/c2-comms\/satellites\/2019\/06\/04\/how-the-nro-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-commercial-imagery\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n