The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awarded a new, six-month, $5.9 million contract to Planet, a commercial imagery provider, to advance the use of high revisit imagery and automated processing to augment and facilitate NGA analysis processes Sept. 21, the agency announced October 3.
“As part of the National System for Geospatial Intelligence, it is the responsibility of NGA to leverage available GEOINT services to satisfy customer needs, including the evaluation of automation efforts employing medium-resolution, high revisit-rate imagery,” said Jonas Skinner, NGA’s Planet program manager.
The NSG is the operating framework supported by producers, consumers and influencers of GEOINT, contributing to the overall advancement of the GEOINT function.
NGA awarded this contract to continue development and evaluation of the broader NSG community needs for Planet-type imagery data to inform our customers’ future technical requirements, said Skinner.
The Planet Subscription contract provides new daily imagery over the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility and areas of interest in the U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command areas of responsibility.
“NGA analysts are working hard to support the SOUTHCOM, AFRICOM and INDO-PACIFIC regions and are collaborating internally to innovate analytic techniques to increase our overall understanding of the daily patterns of life in those areas,” said Skinner.
NGA entered a cooperative research and development agreement with Planet April 4, following the purchase of a $14 million subscription for Planet imagery in July 2017 and an introductory contract signed in 2016.
Source: NGA
By Loren Blinde
October 9, 2018
