LeoLabs CEO and co-founder Dan Ceperley says the firm has a mission “to drive a new era of transparency in LEO.”

AFRL’s new Air Force Explore challenge intends to make four to seven awards, each in the $1 million to $2 million range.

NGA’s Global EDG program is a good example of how the 2017 bifurcation of authority over commercial remote sensing acquisition between the NGA and the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) — a transition that remains somewhat troubled –is supposed to work.

NGA and NRO “have significantly overlapping Venn diagrams,” one industry source said, and they are still trying to “sort that through.” He added, “It’s not a nice clean line.”

“To be quite honest most of our space systems are not the leading edge technologies,” Troy Meink, head of GEOINT at NRO, said. “We’ve not kept up in many cases with the commercial environment.”

House appropriators rejected Trump’s plan to put satellite regulation under the Commerce Department and chide Secretary Wilbur Ross for his refusal to testify on the 2020 budget request.

Newly proposed licensing rules for commercial remote sensing will eliminate automatic DoD review rights for of a majority of applications.

“It is rocket science, after all,” says Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who questions the commission’s mandate on orbital debris mitigation oversight for commercial space companies.

“Launching hundreds of cheap satellites each year as a substitute” for current milspace systems “will result in failure on America’s worst day if we relay on them alone,” Wilson says.

GEOINT: Improving how the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency develops requirements and communicates them to industry — and within the agency — is a top priority for the NGA, according to its deputy director. The agency clearly wants to hear from industry just what it can do to improve its acquisition system. It held an open… Keep reading →