NGA Luno A Delivery Order Awarded to BlackSky
AI Identifies Changes Made on Earth by Human Activity
Another National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Luno A delivery order has been awarded to BlackSky for automated general change detection. This foundational space-based analytics award leverages BlackSky’s proprietary computer vision and other AI capabilities to identify areas of change caused by human activity.
“This Luno A award underscores the maturity and quality of BlackSky’s in-house AI capabilities in meeting the NGA’s stringent requirements for commercial space-based analytics services.”
Brian O’Toole, BlackSky
Under this order, BlackSky will use its very high-resolution Gen-3 and high-cadence Gen-2 imagery plus other commercial sources of data to identify areas of the Earth that have experienced change caused by human activity. BlackSky’s automated detection algorithms will monitor anomalies in real-time and report changes in natural resources, climate, infrastructure development and economic and military activity.
“This Luno A award underscores the maturity and quality of BlackSky’s in-house AI capabilities in meeting the NGA’s stringent requirements for commercial space-based analytics services,” said Brian O’Toole, BlackSky CEO. “BlackSky’s ability to automatically detect anomalies and significant events at machine speed and global scale play a critical role in shaping important strategic national security, policy decisions or military operations.”
“The Luno A program aligns well with BlackSky’s strengths as a software-first company as we develop and deploy novel proprietary AI solutions and techniques that efficiently manage large volumes of data, generate insights and develop predictive analytics,” said O’Toole. “In addition to monitoring for known, well-documented phenomena, BlackSky is uniquely suited to discover uncharted patterns of interest over newly mapped areas of the Earth.”
BlackSky monitors over more than 30 million square kilometers (≈11.6 million square miles) of the Earth’s surface for the NGA. In October, NGA selected BlackSky for the five-year, up to $290 million Luno A multi-award indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to monitor global economic and environmental activity and military capability using high-cadence, rapid revisit satellite imagery and AI-driven change-detection analytics.