WASHINGTON — Vantor, a commercial provider of Earth intelligence, has won a $2.3 million contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to provide intelligence on space objects in low Earth orbit.
The award is Vantor’s third under NGA’s Luno program and the first task order under the Luno framework focused on non-Earth imaging, or NEI — observations of objects in orbit rather than the Earth’s surface.
NGA’s Luno A and Luno B contracts are valued at nearly $500 million over five years and are structured as indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity vehicles, allowing the agency to issue task orders to pre-selected vendors for commercial geospatial intelligence and analytic services.
The latest contract is a Luno B award, Vantor said, focused on automated insights on “priority objects in low Earth orbit, including providing alerts when anomalies are present,” with much of the analysis generated through machine-driven processing.
The company said its system produces intelligence by converting raw satellite imagery into automated detections, classifications and alerts. After receiving a tasking request, Vantor uses software to determine when and which satellite can collect imagery of a target object, then processes the data through automated tools that deliver initial characterization of the object.
The move reflects a broader push by the U.S. government to incorporate commercial capabilities into space domain awareness missions, traditionally handled by classified military systems. As the number of objects in orbit grows, agencies including the U.S. Space Force and NGA have sought additional sources of data to track satellites, debris and potential adversary activity.
Earth-imaging companies such as Vantor — formerly Maxar Intelligence — have increasingly promoted their satellites for this role, arguing that the same high-resolution sensors used for terrestrial imaging can also observe spacecraft in orbit.
Susanne Hake, executive vice president and general manager for Vantor’s U.S. government business, said space domain awareness is an area where “exquisite visual intelligence is extremely hard to come by, creating literal and figurative blind spots.”
She said the company’s NEI-derived intelligence will provide “analysts and decisionmakers with a deeper understanding of the behavior and intent of high-interest space objects.”
The information delivered under the contract will include assessments of a space object’s features, health, velocity and movement, including whether it is maneuvering in ways that could pose a risk to other satellites.
Vantor said its satellites can capture imagery of spacecraft at resolutions of less than 10 centimeters from hundreds of kilometers away, enabling detailed observation of objects in orbit.
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