Ball Aerospace and Spire Global collaborate on Arctic maritime domain awareness

Ball Aerospace of Boulder, CO and Spire Global, Inc. of San Francisco, CA are collaborating on a program on behalf of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to improve Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) in the Arctic, the companies announced on March 6. Together, Ball and Spire are developing a data collection and analysis platform that monitors maritime traffic in the Arctic, which will enable improved awareness of vessel activity and behaviors.

“Ball and Spire’s collaboration demonstrates our abilities to seamlessly deliver to NGA relevant and actionable information critical to security, safety, the economy and the environment,” said Debra Facktor Lepore, Ball Aerospace’s vice president and general manager, strategic operations and commercial aerospace business unit. “For more than 30 years, Ball has delivered data analysis software and systems expertise to the United States Government, and the synergies with Spire will result in commercial solutions that continue to drive maximum effectiveness and affordability for our customers.”

In association with NGA, Ball and Spire will leverage two existing commercial capabilities to create accurate, near real-time pictures of maritime activity in the Arctic. Spire’s constellation of nanosatellites capture Automatic Identification System (AIS) vessel tracking data over the most remote parts of the globe. The AIS data is then ingested into Ball’s cloud-based data analytics architecture and fused with other commercial Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) data to yield detailed profiles of vessel activity and establish benchmarks in vessel behavior.

“This project will provide extraordinary insight into vessel traffic in the Arctic. Due to the remote nature of that region, Spire’s nanosatellites are an excellent way of generating Arctic maritime data with both fast revisit time and low latency,” said Peter Platzer, CEO of Spire. “Through the combination of our commercial nanosatellite constellation and Ball’s extensive experience in data exploitation and analytics, we expect to provide NGA with substantial improvements in Maritime Domain Awareness.”

NGA ensures safety of navigation in the air and on the seas by maintaining the most current information and highest quality services for U.S. military forces and global transport networks. With ship traffic through Arctic routes projected to grow 250 percent by 2025 due to melting polar ice, the collaboration between Ball and Spire addresses a gap in monitoring maritime vessel patterns.

Source: Ball Aerospace