NRO to Create New Contract Vehicle to Procure Commercial Imagery

The National Reconnaissance Office’s commercial space office is planning to launch a new contracting vehicle to procure various types of imagery from private remote-sensing companies.

Currently, the NRO’s approach to acquiring imagery focuses on electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar, radio-frequency and hyperspectral data.

Speaking at the GEOINT Symposium, Pete Muend, head of the NRO commercial space office, said the contract vehicle would not be limited to specific imagery types to meet the Earth observation data needs of the military and intelligence agencies, SpaceNews reported.

Muend also discussed another plan involving the procurement of commercial synthetic aperture radar imagery for the radar commercial layer project. The potential contract would be similar to the one awarded to Maxar, Planet and BlackSky in 2022 but at a smaller scale.

At the same event, Brett Scott, head of the NRO’s Geospatial Intelligence Information Systems Acquisition Directorate, said the agency is identifying the best way to acquire commercial space offerings and ensure the private space industry will profit from the advances in their technologies.