What Was Said on GEOINT 2016
And why it’s important for SpaceTech startups
Note: GEOINT Symposium is an annual (since 2004) event held by non-profit non-lobbying educational organization United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) for the defense, intelligence and homeland security communities.
With the emergence of platforms and APIs for satellite imagery, claims about B2C customers and massive VC funding in Earth Observation startups, it has become a bit blurred that the key customers of remote sensing data at the moment are defense and intelligence agencies.
Historically, government support has been crucial for commercial companies to develop and sustain their business and includes support funding for satellites’ development and acting as a primary customer for data and services.
In the U.S., the substantial procurement contracts from the NGA’s $7.3 billion Enhanced View program signed in 2010 was supposed to translate into the long-term support of the U.S. government to its domestic satellite operators and data providers DigitalGlobe and GeoEye.
However, negative defense budget forecasts led the NGA to revise GeoEye’s service level agreement and cost share arrangement for the development of GeoEye-2, which accelerated merger talks between DigitalGlobe and GeoEye. In July 2012, the two companies announced their intent to combine and form a new company. The merger deal — valued at $900 million was intended to provide cost savings to Enhanced View program, expected to be $1,8 billion, in which $1 billion comes from reducing the number of satellites involved in the program.
The issue also highlighted the non-profitability of Earth Observation industry without government support as a (co-) funder of satellite systems or an anchor tenant for data and services.
Presently SpaceTech startups’ profitability remains uncertain and it seems that success is measured by the amount of the investments raised instead of actual sales
Thus, considering that all key remote sensing data customers, such as National Geospatial Agency (NGA), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and DoD are participating in the symsposium with keynote speeches, it makes a lot of sense to notice what was said.
And the key takeaway is that Silicon Valley startups may have some perspectives regarding government customers. Here are some quotes from the event:
“We want to make sure our systems are available when we need them most. To help offset these trades for any resilience capabilities, we’ll likely look to available commercial or coalition systems to help address any capability shortfalls.” — Marcel Lettrem, Under Secretary of Defense at DoD
Robert Cardillo, NGA’s Director, outlined clear interest in SpaceTech startups’ technologies:
“We plan to advance our profession by going to the geographic heart of American innovation: Silicon Valley. This summer, we’ll create a presence there, what we call NGA Outpost Valley. This NOV will leverage the organic capabilities and energy of the Valley’s open, vibrant, geospatial community”
Interestingly, Cardillo mentioned Planet Labs and Terra Bella, 2 Silicon Valley-based companies in his previous speeches:
“The skies — really space — will darken with hundreds of smallsats to be launched by Skybox, Planet Labs, BlackSky and others. The challenges of taking advantage of that data are daunting. We cannot afford — nor need — to store it all, so will we have to go to an ‘imagery as a service’ model and buy only what we need when we need it? This will be less about the images and more about the derived information or analytics.”
Stepping a bit back, earlier on 31st Space Syposium occured in April 2016, Mr. Cardillo outlined the shift in NGA’s strategy from very-high resolution imagery but lower revisit time (a-la Digital Globe) towards large smallsat constellations and “several-times-a-day” revisit time.
“In the past, we collected and analyzed spatial data — those blinks in time I mentioned before. And we tried to deduce meaning from that data by building assumptions and hypotheses to fill those large gaps in coverage. Those efforts were a lot like driving forward by looking in the rear view mirror. Today, since change happens so much faster on so many fronts, we must understand how objects change through time — that is, resolve their activities faster. When we understand how people, things, and events change through time and space, we achieve our goal of activity resolution. Achieving that goal enables us to give our customers deeper context for the decisions they must make, rather than react to the things that have already happened. The small sat constellation will continuously image thousands of facilities and activities across countries and continents — true global coverage”.
However, it seems that this shift would not affect Enhanced View program, carried out jointly with Digital Globe, the only one provider of commercial imagery to NGA.
Another change in NGA’s strategy is increased attention to satellite imagery analysis capabilities
“…accelerate data to answers. I envision a future where we will move from analyzing Big Data toward realizing the potential of Fast Data. Thus, we need to invest in a near-real-time, small satellite-based analytic system that continuously streams data from hundreds of platforms, pre-analyzes that content, and delivers that change within minutes of collection. We’ll buy basic imagery analysis as a commodity — much like we buy foundation data today”.
Thereby, considering NGA is the biggest remote sensing data customer at the moment, its new strategy is definately a good news for SpaceTech, such as:
- Large smallsat constellations operators, providing daily revisit time, such as Planet Labs, Terra Bella, BlackSky Global and some others
- Companies, providing imagery analytics services, such as Orbital Insight, Spaceknow and Descartes Labs
Thus, summing up SpaceTech’s commnity expressions from 2016 GEOINT Symposium, here is Dr. Andy Hock’s (Terra Bella product manager) quote:
“This is a much better time to be a startup trying to do business with the U.S. government. We’re looking forward to very active dialogue.”
P.S.
In addition, here are some useful links detailing this topic:
