Maxar books $176M NGA imagery access contract

Maxar Technologies has booked a new potential four-year, $176 million contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to extend access of U.S. government users to the company’s library of Earth imagery.

NGA has run the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery program since 2011 for warfighters, first responders, intelligence analysts and civil government users to acquire imagery from Maxar and before that DigitalGlobe, which Maxar acquired two years ago.

This new contract begins on Sept. 1 with an initial base year valued at $44 million and three option years at the same value each, Maxar said Tuesday.

The announcement by Maxar comes nearly three months after NGA disclosed in a contracting notice that it planned to extend the award on a sole-source basis with the company.

NGA has tasked DigitalGlobe to incorporate its Geospatial Big Data Exploitation service into workflows used in extracting information from archived and newly-collected imagery.

Global EGD is intended to build off of the EnhancedView imagery program, which NGA transitioned responsibility of to the National Reconnaissance Office last year.

The goal of Global EGD is to give uses notifications and alerts with information on geographic location, activity and change characterizations derived from automated analysis of images.