Multimillion-Dollar Contract Awarded to BlackSky
Unnamed Defense Customer Makes Multi-Year Deal for Gen-3 and Gen-2 Assured Services
A competitive, multimillion dollar contract from a new, unnamed international customer that combines immediate Gen-3 and Gen-2 subscription-based imagery and analytics services, as well as follow-on ground segment modernization services, has been awarded to BlackSky.
“Our international allied customers continue to lead as early adopters, constantly developing novel applications for AI-enabled change-based monitoring."
Brian O'Toole, BlackSky
As part of the agreement, the customer will receive immediate, subscription-based access to Assured services, which guarantees tasking capacity for persistent monitoring over a customer’s areas of interest. BlackSky will also upgrade the customer’s existing ground station and mission operations center with direct-downlink and uplink communications capabilities for faster, locally controlled intelligence.
“This contract illustrates how BlackSky’s reliable fully integrated real-time, commercial space-based intelligence services can be used as an important tool for modern defense and intelligence organizations engaged across the full spectrum of grey-zone conflicts worldwide,” said Brian O'Toole, BlackSky CEO. “BlackSky’s end-to-end automated architecture uniquely gives our most demanding customers the ability to task and receive high-cadence imagery and AI-enabled analytics starting on day one.”
“Our international allied customers continue to lead as early adopters, constantly developing novel applications for AI-enabled change-based monitoring,” O’Toole continued. “For this contract, BlackSky will also be optimizing the ground segment, making the customer’s overall sovereign architecture forward-compatible with the high processing volumes associated with low-latency, high-cadence space-based monitoring.”
The customer will use BlackSky's automated Spectra® AI-enabled tasking and analytics platform to order and fuse data from Gen-3 and Gen-2 satellites, enabling the detection, identification and classification of objects of interest, such as vehicles, aircraft and vessels, with no humans in the loop. Gen-3 capabilities build upon the proven architecture of Gen-2, allowing for continued innovation and rapid deployment of new technologies.
BlackSky has proprietary in-house satellite design and agile manufacturing, constellation operations and end-to-end advanced software development capabilities. This vertically integrated approach gives the company the ability to quickly develop, produce and deploy reliable space-based intelligence solutions at disruptive speed, scale and economics.