Weekly GEOINT Community News

NGA Joins Challenge.gov; MDA to Continue NGA Support; Delta IV Heavy Rocket Launches NRO Payload; Leidos to Provide ISR to Army

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NGA Joins Challenge.gov

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) listed its first submission to Challenge.gov, a technical hub for federal incentive prize and challenge competitions. Challenge.gov listings include technical, scientific, ideation, and creative competitions to aid the U.S government in finding innovative solutions to problems by drawing upon ideas and talent from the public. NGA’s challenge, Living Stories, seeks an easy-to-use time slider to quickly and dynamically track changes to a story. For the purposes of the challenge, NGA seeks a way to easily track versioned changes to a “living document” in the form of a WordPress post. The challenge is organized by the agency’s GEOINT Pathfinder initiative, which focuses on developing open-source solutions to national security issues. The winner will be awarded a $10,000 prize. The submission period runs through July 15 and the winner will be announced Aug. 1. See NGA’s Living Stories challenge posted on Challenge.gov.

MDA to Continue NGA Support

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) was awarded a follow-on contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to continue providing MDA’s patented Persistent Change Monitoring (PCM) solution in support of NGA’s Foundation GEOINT. Information provided by PCM helps monitor the effects of climate change, detect urban sprawl, deforestation, identify new facilities and construction, and much more. MDA’s software identifies changes in land-cover that persist regardless of seasonal changes or weather effects, which helps analysts focus on areas of change when updating global map databases.

Delta IV Heavy Rocket Launches NRO Payload

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket launched a top-secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) June 11 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., reports a NASASpaceflight article. Delta IV is the largest and most powerful rocket currently in service with the U.S. Designated NRO Launch 37, or NROL-37, was the second of the year for NRO, following a NROL-45 mission in February. The Delta IV is expected to launch again in early August with a payload for Air Force Space Command.

Leidos to Provide ISR to Army

Leidos secured a prime contract from the U.S. Army to support the Army Research Laboratory’s (ARL) Sensors Electron Devices Directorate (SEDD), reports Armytechnology.com. Leidos will provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance research and development to ARL SEDD and develop a suite of analytic software and tools to enable the integration of large data sets and the redeployment of new and existing sensors.

Orbit Logic Awarded Air Force Space Situational Awareness Contract

Orbit Logic signed a phase two small business innovation research contract sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, reports Satnews. Orbit Logic will research and implement software to optimize scheduling for observations of known space objects and the search for unknown space objects from ground observation sites. The company is teamed with the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Texas at Austin for this effort.

Air Force Opens Remote Sensing Lab

In April, the U.S. Air Force opened a remote sensing lab in Boulder, Colo., reports C4ISR & Networks. The lab will give researchers access to data drawn from weather satellites as well as from the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) constellation. According to the article, the lab will allow partners in industry and academia to make better use of infrared and other space-based data being collected for missile defense purposes.

exactEarth to Provide Satellite Data to French Navy

exactEarth announced it was selected by Telespazio France to supply Satellite Automatic Identification System (AIS) services to the French Navy as part of the recent four-year Trimaran 2 project won by Telespazio France and Airbus Defence and Space. exactEarth will provide a Satellite AIS data feed of the French economic exclusion zone to Telespazio France, which will provide a viewing capability to several users in the French Navy.

Juniper Releases Geode

Juniper Systems announced its newest product, the Geode—a real-time, sub-meter Global Navigation Satellite System receiver used to collect data in rugged environments. Geode is small and compact and is built to Juniper Rugged standards for reliable performance in harsh environments.

Peer Intel

U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Linda Urrutia-Varhall, former assistant deputy chief of staff for ISR at the Pentagon, was assigned a new role as director of operations for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Urrutia-Varhall has served in the Air Force for 32 years and was formerly director of intelligence for U.S. Southern Command as well as a senior executive officer to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Photo Credit: United Launch Alliance/U.S. Air Force

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