These awards mark a significant step in expanding the NRO’s access to cutting-edge multi-phenomenology remote sensing capabilities, including electrooptical (EO), hyperspectral imaging (HSI), and radio frequency (RF) to enhance NRO’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission. The SCE CSO represents a flexible, industry-aligned acquisition model designed to rapidly integrate commercial technologies such as EO, HSI, radar, RF, and Light Detection and Ranging.

Building on the success of prior SCE efforts, this initiative features a rolling five-year proposal window, enabling the NRO to engage a diverse range of providers—including emerging startups and non-traditional innovators—without fixed deadlines. These partnerships accelerate the delivery of operational capabilities to the NRO and its interagency partners, ensuring resilience and adaptability in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

“These awards underscore the NRO’s commitment to leveraging the best of commercial innovation to stay ahead of emerging challenges,” said Pete Muend, director of the NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office. “By combining multi-phenomenology data from providers like EarthDaily, ICEYE, and Pixxel, we can deliver more comprehensive, timely insights for national security, environmental monitoring, disaster response, and humanitarian efforts.”

Commercial providers receiving awards include EarthDaily for daily global EO coverage, ICEYE for RF capabilities, and Pixxel for HSI. These selections highlight NRO’s commitment to dismantling traditional barriers and fostering efficient pathways for industry engagement. An alternate acquisition approach to Broad Agency Announcements, CSOs can be used to acquire innovative commercial items, technologies, or services that directly meet NRO requirements. The first NRO CSO contract awards were announced Feb. 10. The CSO complements existing SCE Broad Agency Announcements and does not replace them, instead expanding the NRO’s toolkit for agile acquisitions. Budget permitting, the NRO anticipates additional awards later in 2026 to further diversify its multi-phenomenology portfolio and address evolving mission gaps.

Source: NRO

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“We are operating the largest, most diverse, most capable overhead constellation in NRO’s history as we face increasingly complex threats in space and on the ground,” said NRO Director Dr. Chris Scolese. “Through these newest contracts, we are very excited to explore the potential of commercial hyperspectral imagery and what it may be able to contribute to our world-class intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.”

Hyperspectral images are made up of light from hundreds of colors across the electromagnetic spectrum. Since hyperspectral imaging collects many different colors of light, any given object will have a unique signature. This enables users to obtain information about each pixel in an image, with the goal of identifying objects and materials. Hyperspectral imagery has a diverse set of applications including agriculture, mining, geology, and intelligence and surveillance.

The commercial hyperspectral capabilities contracts focus on increasing knowledge and understanding of current and expected hyperspectral imagery availability, quality, and operational utility through a two-stage effort. The first stage focuses on analytical studies to provide estimates of system capabilities at both the individual sensor and constellation levels, as well as business and cybersecurity planning. The second stage focuses on assessing on-orbit capabilities and procuring data products.

“In just over four months from RFP release to award, these contracts demonstrate our continued commitment to agile acquisition,” said Pete Muend, director of the NRO’s commercial systems program office. “Speed remains vital to take advantage of the innovation coming from industry, and to assess emerging technologies such as HSI and the potential to address intelligence challenges.”

These awards follow six BAA contracts for commercial radio frequency remote sensing awarded in September 2022, and five commercial radar BAA contracts in January 2022. The SCE BAAs build on NRO’s earlier successful study and operational contracts. They create additional opportunities to expand NRO’s commitment to rapid acquisition and commercial space-based data integration.

Source: NRO

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