COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Maxar Intelligence this year plans to expand its constellation of electro-optical (EO) imaging satellites to satisfy data needs for government and commercial buyers, according to a company official.
Shortly, the company will launch its next two Worldview Legion satellites with the goal to put four more on orbit this year to triple capacity to collect 30-centimeter imagery and increase revisit rates to up to 15 times a day, Susanne Hake, general manager, U.S. Government for Maxar Intelligence, said during an interview this week at the Space Symposium.
The satellites are to be in sun synchronous and mid-inclination orbit–orbits that allow collection throughout the day, she said. “It’s different than how we have launched satellites in the past,” Hake said.
As Worldview Legion goes beyond the current four satellites, Maxar Intelligence will be in position to provide more insights for customers related to the imagery data, Hake said.
“If we’re going to have more capacity, and we can give a lot more imagery to our users, they’re going to need the ability to understand what’s in that imagery,” she said. “So, [we’re] investing a lot in surfacing insights out of the imagery.”
Those insights include pattern of life analysis such as anomalies and change detection, Hake said. This type of analytic work is done for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) by four companies under the Economic Indicator Monitoring contract. Maxar Intelligence is not on the contract but is eyeing the follow-on effort, LUNO, she said.
NGA plans two LUNO efforts, the $290 million LUNO A and the $200 million LUNO B, both of which are focused on commercial analytics.
Maxar Intelligence views artificial intelligence and related algorithms as “a component of a workflow” that help provide mission solutions rather than as the centerpiece of its offerings, Hake said.
“We want to focus what we’re building on [which is] particular use cases and building out what we’re talking about as mission solutions,” she said. “So, think about for a maritime domain awareness solution, how are we helping somebody track vessels coming in and out of ports and things like that.”
The mission solutions strategy also includes working with other companies in the remote sensing space. In 2023, Maxar Intelligence worked with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery provider
Umbra Space to pull that company’s imagery, fuse it with other data, and make it available as part of its products and services.
“So, to do a successful maritime domain awareness solution, you need to actually do tipping and queuing from SAR, for example, or maybe RF (radio frequency),” she said. “So, another area that we’re thinking a lot about is how are we actually using information from all the different phenomenologies and building out kind of this virtual constellation where you can look at all of these different types of imagery and information in a single place.”
Maxar Intelligence is also investing in providing space domain awareness with its satellites, which can point EO sensors into space and view Earth, Hake said. There is interest from satellite companies that want a visibility check on their spacecraft post-launch, for example, to see if the solar panels have deployed, she said.
There is also government and international interest in this capability, she said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration licenses Maxar Intelligence’s imagery for non-Earth imaging.
“It’s a really unique capability to be able to do at the non-classified level,” she said. “And we’re seeing a lot of different use cases.”