NGA eyes ways to use commercial satellite data

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is looking for new tools to manage commercial geospatial information amid wide expectations that data will only grow in the future.

In a new sources sought notice, NGA says it wants tools to coordinate planning for how it will collect data from multiple commercial satellite constellations. The agency also wants advanced analytics on large volumes of commercial data in order to help process that intelligence and deliver it users within minutes of collection.

Over the next decade, NGA expects the number of commercial satellites to increase significantly and this creates the opportunity for what the agency calls “high cadence GEOINT collection” as well as bring enhanced mission coverage.

To take advantage of this, NGA wants tools that will create an on-demand service for rapid production of intelligence. This includes processing raw images as well as process sets of images of a particular areas over a period of time. NGA calls these “high cadence cube data” with duration from hours to weeks worth of imagery.

NGA is looking for commercially-available tools that help with planning and collection as well as automate processing.

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