On March 31, BlackSky Technology Inc. announced that it was awarded a multi-year, sole-source $99 million U.S. government IDIQ contract for advanced, next generation capabilities. The company received an initial $2 million to accelerate the design of an advanced large aperture optical payload for Earth observation and space domain awareness platforms.
“This award validates and leverages our investments in leap ahead space technologies that feature next generation space architectures as part of our long-term constellation roadmap,” said Brian O’Toole, BlackSky CEO. “With U.S. government collaboration, we can accelerate these critical technologies as part of multi-year advanced technology development program. In order to demonstrate the scale and impact of these new technologies we’ll be focused on quickly fielding advanced systems that combine future-generation payloads with an evolution of our proven Gen-3 space architecture.”
This AFRL contract serves to develop additional commercial space-based intelligence capabilities and mission applications distinct from those addressed by current Gen-2 and Gen-3 monitoring systems and the company’s future AROS broad area search system. The contract is expected to advance innovations for optical imaging and overall platform-level utility and support more novel applications in high-cadence Earth monitoring and observing objects in low Earth, geostationary and cis-lunar orbits.
“We will leverage the unique, highly scalable core technology of Gen-3 into every incremental advancement along our roadmap looking at the AROS broad area search system as the next step into the more expansive very large-aperture optical imagery capabilities covered by this contract. These advancements will enable very high-resolution imaging and collection performance combined with low latency space-based communications,” said O’Toole.
The satellites developed under this contract are expected to operate as both a data storage and processing hub and be compatible with on-orbit data centers in space, a ubiquitous AI-enabled communications environment. Satellites developed under this effort are also expected to integrate with current and future launch vehicles.
Source: BlackSky
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