Welcome to The DownLinQ

Welcome to The DownlinQ, the new blog of CosmiQ Works. We are dedicated to supporting the Intelligence Community (IC) in leveraging new and emerging commercial space capabilities. We plan to use this blog as a forum to post content on a wide variety of topics ranging from our technical research findings to our perspectives on the state of the rapidly evolving space market.

Technology Challenges

We conduct a series of technology challenges, or research projects, each year in order to demonstrate the art of the possible with emerging space capabilities. To do so, we partner with various national security agencies, the space industry (incumbent companies as well as venture-backed startups), academia and other non-profits.

Our projects focus on the application of state-of-the-art technology against specific national security mission problems. For example, our research last year examined how new, open source machine learning techniques could enhance satellite imagery analysis for maritime domain awareness missions. Given our results (which we will be summarizing in an upcoming post) and the ongoing advances in the computer vision field, we are continuing our research in this exciting area and are currently exploring some cutting-edge techniques that we think will be particularly useful for remote sensory analysis.

Market Trends

We believe that the various capabilities being developed by numerous venture-backed startups in the commercial space market could have profound implications for both the public and private sector.

Yet, with all of this activity, it can be difficult to anticipate how the market will evolve, and to distinguish reality from hype. Last year, we developed an overarching framework (found here) that emphasizes the need to think about the emerging market from an ecosystem perspective.

Going forward, we will be researching a variety of topics relevant to the commercial space market. From the emergence of innovative commercial applications to the deployment of new space and airborne-based modalities, we will be posting a series of thought pieces about developments important to the space and aerospace communities.

Photo Credit: SpaceX