Capella Space Awarded Commercial Radar Contract By National Reconnaissance Office

Jan. 20, 2022

Capella Space announced a new contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to demonstrate the company's synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery capabilities. Through this contract, Capella will work with the NRO to provide SAR data modeling and simulation, end-to-end regional imagery responsiveness demonstrations, theater downlink demonstrations and sample imagery delivery.

This contract follows an October 2021 NRO announcement about its new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Framework for Strategic Commercial Enhancements, focused on new and emerging commercial capabilities. The BAA Framework allows the NRO to rapidly explore, assess and leverage innovative industry capabilities to meet new intelligence challenges and inform operational requirements.

"As the first & only operator of an American commercial SAR constellation, we are thrilled to take our partnership with NRO to this next phase ," said Payam Banazadeh, CEO and founder of Capella Space. "The BAA Framework allows the NRO to take advantage of our growing constellation of high resolution satellites. We look forward to working with the NRO to expand our reach into additional US government customers."

In December 2019, Capella signed an earlier contract with the NRO to study the integration of its SAR imagery into the NRO's national ground architecture. The company has partnered with several other U.S. Department of Defense agencies, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Space Force.