Hawkeye 360 and Capella Space have won separate contracts to perform data integration studies for the National Reconnaissance Office as part of the agency’s efforts to establish an overhead geospatial intelligence architecture.
NRO said Wednesday Hawkeye will study the application of analytics and geolocation technology in remote radio frequency sensing, which may be used for operations such as message transmission and automatic ship identification.
Capella will explore the use of synthetic aperture radar technology for agriculture monitoring, land and ocean surveillance, intelligence analysis and battlefield reconnaissance missions.
Pete Muend, director of NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office, said the agency seeks to integrate commercial RF and SAR offerings into the national overhead architecture.
NRO selected Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR), Planet and Spaceflight Industries’ BlackSky Global business for a commercial imagery assessment program in June, then added HySpecIQ to the GEOINT research effort in September.
