US NGA Signs Research and Development Agreement with Capella Space

An artist rendition of a Capella SAR satellite. Photo: Capella

Capella Space signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The CRADA gives Capella access to NGA researchers for deeper insight into problems and in return NGA gains access to Capella Space’s Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data and analytics services and signifies NGA’s first research partnership with an American commercial small satellite SAR data company, in an effort to expand its research capabilities.

The CRADA with Capella Space is part of the NGA’s broader Commercial Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Strategy, first released October 2015 and later updated in September 2018. The NGA Commercial GEOINT Strategy aims to provide a vision and plan for continually increasing collaboration with commercial GEOINT companies in order to meet rising customer demands for more timely and persistent imagery, analytics, and contextual information.

“This is an exciting partnership that has the potential to yield new intelligence opportunities. Capella’s high temporal resolution SAR imagery will give intelligence professionals key insight and strategic advantage,” said Jarrett Adrian, NGA’s Principal Investigator for this CRADA.