WASHINGTON — The National Reconnaissance Office has granted the first three contracts under its newest contracting vehicle for commercial imagery providers, designed to allow the spy satellite agency to take advantage of new and innovative technology, NRO deputy director Maj. Gen. Christopher Povak said today.
The three winners, he told the National Security Space Association’s annual Defense and Intelligence Space Conference here are:
Australian start-up HEO, to provide up-close imagery of other satellites from its suite of sensors hosted as payloads on numerous spacecraft;
British start-up SatVu, for thermal imagery provided by its HotSpot satellites carrying medium-wave infrared cameras; and
US firm Sierra Nevada Corporation, for radio-frequency geolocation data.
The awards are the first to be let under NRO’s Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO) contract mechanism issued last July that features a revolving five-year window and allows vendors to pitch unsolicited proposals.
The CSO covers a range of difference phenomenologies for gathering intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data from space — from traditional electro-optical cameras to hyperspectral sensors — and allows vendors to pitch unsolicited proposals.
In a press release issued today, the NRO said that “budget permitting,” it “anticipates issuing additional awards later this year to expand these multi-phenomenology capabilities.”
And Povak encouraged other companies to send in proposals.
“We look forward to working with all three of those, but for the rest of the commercial ISR providers that are out there or listening in, this offering window is open for an extended period of time, for the next four plus years,” he said.
“We’ll have ways of putting new demand signal out, and we’ll always have an open way of receiving proposals from from you. So we look forward to your ideas,” Povak added.