A rendering of the Nuview LiDAR satellite. Photo: Space Flight Laboratory

Nuview has been awarded additional $5 million in funding from the Department of Defense’s National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC) program for development of its LiDAR payload. 

Nuview said this funding will enable rapid prototyping of the payload, a step toward the company’s planned commercial LiDAR satellite constellation which is being developed to elevation models of the Earth’s land surface. 

NSIC is a component of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) that provides funding to early-stage hardware startups focusing on dual-use products. NSIC previously awarded Nuview $2.75 million in funding in 2023. 

“This award enables Nuview to advance our payloads in direct response to those priorities, while simultaneously opening new commercial markets for global 3D data. Our constellation will provide an unprecedented capability: high-resolution, three-dimensional mapping of the entire Earth at scale,” Nuview CEO Clint Graumann said in a release.

Last year, Nuview selected Space Flight Laboratory to develop the pathfinder satellite bus for its LiDAR demonstration satellite.