BlackSky Wins Five-Year NGA Luno A Contract Valued Up to $290 Million to Monitor Global Economic Activity and Military Capability
BlackSky Technology Inc. (NYSE: BKSY) was awarded a five-year, up to $290 million multi-award indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity NGA contract to monitor global economic and environmental activity and military capability using high-cadence, rapid revisit satellite imagery and AI-driven change-detection analytics.
Under the contract, BlackSky expects to provide analytical services that detect and identify objects of interest such as aircraft, ships, vehicles, and shipping containers. BlackSky will use its current and future time-diverse satellite constellation to provide change-monitoring services over critical infrastructure. BlackSky will leverage its proprietary broad area search capability to automatically detect and identify changes to the Earth resulting from human and natural activities such as deforestation, construction, mining, flooding and other phenomena that contribute to climate change or wildfires.
“The Luno A contract validates demand for BlackSky’s commercial real-time, AI-driven dynamic monitoring services at massive scale,” said Brian O’Toole, BlackSky CEO. “BlackSky’s first-of-its-kind space-based intelligence system delivers answers to our customers’ most pressing questions at industry-leading speed and economics.”
The contract also supports the development of new and emerging products, data and services such as novel AI solutions and techniques to manage large volumes of data, generate insights and develop predictive analytics. BlackSky’s scalable and cost-effective approach to artificial intelligence gives customers the ability to run data-intensive broad area search inquiries more frequently compared to traditional solutions.
“BlackSky’s commitment to automation across our entire architecture has had the cumulative effect of generating new, foundational machine learning tools for the U.S. government that will advance the key areas of focus for Luno A,” said O’Toole. “Today, BlackSky monitors over more than 30 million square kilometers of the Earth’s surface for the NGA.”
BlackSky’s easy-to-access, subscription-based services will support the NGA’s efforts to modernize workflows and seamlessly integrate data and services into its enterprise capabilities. The NGA has indicated that the unclassified nature of commercial data will ensure that Luno A products, data, and services are easily shareable with key partners and allies across the globe.
Luno A is the follow-on contract to the NGA’s $60 million Economic Indicator Monitoring (EIM) contract which was originally awarded in 2021. The EIM contract focused on purchasing commercial data as services to integrate into the NGA’s machine learning and artificial intelligence efforts. BlackSky won six competitive delivery orders under the EIM program.