NGA extends Planet contract

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is exercising a six-month option for a $5.9 million contract to Planet, a small satellite, commercial imagery provider, to advance the use of high revisit imagery and automated processing to augment and facilitate NGA analysis processes, the agency announced March 21.

NGA exercised the option to continue development and evaluation of the broader National System for Geospatial Intelligence community needs for Planet’s commercial imagery data to inform customers’ future technical requirements.

“Over the last three years, Planet data has been used by the combatant commands to support their ongoing missions around the world and to train automated analytic systems to monitor and recognize changes in those operational environments,” said Scot Currie, NGA’s deputy director of Source Operations Group, that falls under the directorate that delivers geospatial data to internal and external customers.

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 also entered into a cooperative research and development agreement with Planet in April 2018, following the purchase of a $14 million subscription for Planet imagery in July 2017 and an introductory contract NGA signed with Planet in 2016.

Source: NGA