AURORA, Colo. — The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has awarded new contracts for Earth sensing data to three companies under its Strategic Commercial Enhancements (SCE) effort, adding additional satellite companies in several areas the agency is already collecting commercial-based data on.
The Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) awards were made to EarthDaily for daily global electro-optical and infrared collection, Pixxel for hyperspectral imagery, and Iceye for radio frequency (RF) data, in addition to the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data the company already provides the agency through an earlier SCE award.
Each contractor received a $300,000 base contract for stage 1 modeling and simulation, and each could be awarded a stage 2 option worth $900,000 for “products and ad hoc items,” an NRO spokesperson told Defense Daily.
The awards follow shortly after the first CSO contracts under the SCE effort to HEO, SatVu and Sierra Nevada Corp. in February for non-Earth imagery, medium-wave infrared imagery, and RF sensing respectively.
Shortly after the initial CSO award, SatVu “decided to pivot their business approach,” Pete Muend, director of NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office, said at the GEOINT Symposium here.
Earlier SCE awards have covered electro-optical, hyperspectral, RF and SAR phenomenologies.
Muend said these contracts have been “highly successful” and have allowed NRO to access more types of commercial data.
Companies that NRO has awarded contracts to under SCE typically begin with modeling and simulation efforts if they don’t have satellites already on orbit, Muend said. If they do have operational spacecraft, then the agency will purchase data to verify earlier modeling and simulation, test vendor assumptions, for example, around latency, and for “real world operations,” he said.
