The US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded BAE Systems a five-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) $347 million contract for NERVE, the National System for Geospatial-Intelligence (NSG) Enterprise Repository and Virtual Environment programme.
NERVE will modernise the NSG Consolidated Library (NCL), which includes expanding it from a physical data centre to cloud-based data services.
The NCL is a centralised operational and systems framework that hosts geospatial intelligence (GEOINT). NERVE will take capabilities that have been on premise at physical locations and migrate them to a modern cloud-based software architecture. Regardless of location, this will enable NGA analysts to receive and make sense of vast amounts of information faster.
NERVE will also provide new GEOINT capabilities and integrate sensors into the cloud-based content management system.
Meg Redlin, product line director for Mission Systems at BAE Systems said: “This is an important upgrade for the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense due to the high volume of critical data that comes into the NSG workflow.
“NERVE allows that data to flow out at the rate needed to support predictive analytics and missions. It modernises and sustains geospatial intelligence – getting it to the right users at the right time.”
Work on NERVE will take place at BAE Systems’ San Diego, Rome, New York and Reston, Virginia, facilities, as well as NGA St Louis and Washington sites. Major cloud deployments are ongoing and will continue through the period of performance.
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SatVu launches HotSat-3 to double thermal satellite capacity
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SatVu has launched HotSat-3 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission, adding capacity for high-resolution thermal intelligence from space.
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SatVu has launched HotSat-3, its latest mid-wave infrared sensing satellite, aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The British thermal intelligence company said HotSat-3 will double its constellation collection capacity once commissioning is complete. The satellite will operate alongside HotSat-2, enabling SatVu to collect high-resolution thermal imagery day and night, with the ability to revisit any location on Earth every 24 hours.
HotSat-3 is SatVu’s third 3.5m resolution mid-wave infrared satellite and forms part of the company’s move towards more persistent thermal intelligence from space.
SatVu expands thermal intelligence from space
The additional capacity will allow customers to observe the same strategic sites more frequently, building time series data that can show whether an asset is active, how intensely it is operating and how that activity is changing over time.
SatVu’s thermal imagery can detect heat signatures from assets and infrastructure including vehicle and vessel engines, generators, gas flares, petrochemical facilities, rail cars, data centres, maritime vessel wakes, power plant cooling effluent plumes and industrial heat sources.
The company said this capability is relevant across defence and intelligence, economic intelligence and climate resilience markets.
For defence and intelligence users, high-resolution thermal data can provide an independent layer of information for assessing activity at strategic sites and critical infrastructure, including at night or in locations where ground information may be limited or delayed.
HotSat-3 to support daily site monitoring
Anthony Baker, chief executive and co-founder of SatVu, said: “HotSat-3 is where the constellation optimises what we can deliver for customers.
“With two operational satellites, we will have double the capacity: customers can collect twice as much imagery, monitor twice as many sites, or return to the same site more often.”
He said repeated observation would allow users to move beyond single snapshots and understand how activity is changing.
“Return to a site, day and night, and you can read its operational state by what is hot and what is not, what is on and what is off,” Baker said.
“That is the operational heartbeat we are building SatVu to measure: status, intensity and change across the assets and infrastructure that matter to governments, markets and industry.”
HotSat-3 will now enter commissioning before the start of commercial operations. SatVu said launches are already secured for HotSat-4 and HotSat-5, supporting further increases in capacity and revisit frequency as the constellation grows.
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Former Boeing executive Richard Mills will lead the growth strategy of Cohort and its seven subsidiaries which specialise in defence and security technology across the UK, Germany, Portugal and Australia.
