The National Reconnaissance Office is preparing to survey commercial capabilities to provide various geospatial datasets as part of a long-term campaign to establish a new program of record.
After NRO Director Christopher Scolese announced the NRO’s plan to issue a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to learn about commercial synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) datasets, Peter Muend, director of the NRO Commercial Systems Program Office, met with reporters to discuss the agency’s imminent plans for SAR as well as future plans for hyperspectral, lidar and RF data.
Through the BAA scheduled to be issued this fall, the NRO is seeking information from companies that currently acquire SAR imagery and data as well as firms that will “have some capability in the pretty near future,” Muend said. “We look forward to seeing how they do their modeling methodology and to start thinking through how that capability might fit into our larger hybrid architecture,” which includes government and commercial satellites.
NRO begins journey toward commercial data program of record – SpaceNews
