America's National Reconnaissance Office Wants Satellite Imagery From Commercial Providers

Satellite imagery shows crowds of people gathered on the tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan as thousands of people try to exit the country. (Courtesy of Maxar Technologies)  

Defense News: National Reconnaissance Office wants satellite imagery from commercial providers 

WASHINGTON — The National Reconnaissance Office is turning to industry for more satellite imagery, issuing a Nov. 3 request for proposals that could see contracts awarded in early 2022. 

The NRO has long been charged with developing, building and operating the nation’s fleet of spy satellites, but it was only recently made responsible for acquiring satellite imagery from commercial providers. That task had been the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s job, but the responsibility was passed to the NRO in 2017. 

The NRO then began looking into how commercial services could best fulfill the intelligence community’s needs, issuing several study contracts beginning in 2019 that allowed the agency to assess commercially available capabilities.  

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WNU Editor: Like SpaceX is to NASA, Maxar Technologies is to NRO.

New Satellite Can Allow Spy Agencies To See Through The Walls Of Buildings

Futurism: A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night 

The resolution is so crisp that you can see inside individual rooms. 

A few months ago, a company called Capella Space launched a satellite capable of taking clear radar images of anywhere in the world, with incredible resolution — even through the walls of some buildings. 

And unlike most of the huge array of surveillance and observational satellites orbiting the Earth, its satellite Capella 2 can snap a clear picture during night or day, rain or shine. 

“It turns out that half of the world is in nighttime, and half of the world, on average, is cloudy,” CEO Payam Banazadeh, a former system engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Futurism. 

“When you combine those two together, about 75 percent of Earth, at any given time, is going to be cloudy, nighttime, or it’s going to be both. It’s invisible to you, and that portion is moving around.”

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WNU Editor: Impressive. 

 More News On A New Satellite That Allows Spy Agencies To See Through The Walls Of Buildings

Capella delivers super sharp satellite radar pictures -- BBC 

Capella Space unveils new high-resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery -- C4ISRNet 

Capella Space's new satellite is eerily observant -- Input 

Capella Space releases high-resolution Spotlight imagery -- Space News 

I SPY Creepy new satellite allows spy agencies to see through WALLS of buildings -- The SUN 

A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Buildings, Day or Night -- Futurism 

A startup is teaching the US military how to make space radar cheap -- Quartz