The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) announced the award of six study contracts for commercial hyperspectral imagery (HSI). Companies receiving awards under NRO’s Strategic Commercial Enhancement’s (SCE) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Framework include BlackSky Technology, HyperSat, Orbital Sidekick, Pixxel, Planet, and Xplore.
NRO Director Dr. Chris Scolese said, “Through these contracts, we will explore the potential of commercial hyperspectral imagery and what it may be able to contribute to our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.”
Hyperspectral images are made up of light from hundreds of colors across the electromagnetic spectrum. Since hyperspectral imaging collects many different colors of light, any given object will have a unique signature.
This enables users to obtain information about each pixel in an image, with the goal of identifying objects and materials. Hyperspectral imagery has a diverse set of applications including agriculture, mining, geology, and intelligence and surveillance.
The commercial hyperspectral capabilities contracts focus on increasing knowledge and understanding of current and expected hyperspectral imagery availability, quality, and operational utility through a two-stage effort.
The first stage focuses on analytical studies to provide estimates of system capabilities at both the individual sensor and constellation levels, as well as business and cybersecurity planning. The second stage focuses on assessing on-orbit capabilities and procuring data products.
